I was driving home this afternoon, listening to NPR on the radio, when a story came on about the Associated Press. The segment was all about how the AP is losing money because people are using its online content and the AP is not being compensated. I was quite amused.
Ever since the Charlie Babington incident last year, as well as other incidents reported at DailyKos, I have always tried to find other sources when linking to news stories here. I found it quite amusing today to hear the story on NPR about how the AP has found a way to start charging people who link to its stories. I've been to the NPR site looking for a link to to the NPR story I listened to, but so far haven't been unsuccessful in finding it. I do remember that it ended with the correspondent asking a blogger if he linked to AP stories. The blogger responded, "Not any more."
UPDATE: H/T Minerva for finding the link to the NPR story at Marketplace. And a correction. The blogger responded: "I did."
I was able to find a story posted yesterday at that New York Times that explains what the AP is trying to do.
Taking a new hard line that news articles should not turn up on search engines and Web sites without permission, The Associated Press said Thursday that it would add software to each article that shows what limits apply to the rights to use it, and that notifies The A.P. about how the article is used.
A.P. Cracks Down on Unpaid Use of Articles on Web
The software they are talking about isn't anything new. My sister recently explained to me that photographers use a similar technique to mark their photos for copyright protection. What I find so amusing about this is that the AP is spending all this time and effort under the misguided notion that the AP is going to reap some major financial rewards by doing this.
The New York Times article quite clearly explains that other online news media already pay the subscription fees to link to AP articles.
Some popular news aggregators like The Huffington Post and Google News have licensing agreements, paying The A.P. for the use of its material. But no comparable agreements cover general Internet searches that turn up news articles with a variety of other results.
A.P. Cracks Down on Unpaid Use of Articles on Web
So why would anybody worried about the AP suing them for using the AP's material bother to link directly to an AP story, when all one has to do is paraphrase the content at another site like Huffington Post (who already pays the AP for the privilege of publishing the articles) and link to the article at that other site? Of course, there are a lot of people out there on the Internet who don't even begin to understand and comprehend "fair use" laws. Those of us who have websites have had to deal with people stealing our content verbatim, or hotlinking to our images. Perhaps, the AP has a team of lawyers that need something to do and they are just ready to start pouncing.
Oh, yes, and what about that pesky Fair Use Doctrine? The AP doesn't want to talk about that:
"If someone can build multibillion-dollar businesses out of keywords, we can build multihundred-million businesses out of headlines, and we’re going to do that," Mr. Curley said. The goal, he said, was not to have less use of the news articles, but to be paid for any use.
Search engines and news aggregators contend that their brief article citations fall under the legal principle of fair use. Executives at some news organizations have said they are reluctant to test the Internet boundaries of fair use, for fear that the courts would rule against them.
Mr. Curley declined to address the fair use question, or to say what action The A.P. would take against sites that use articles without licensing.
"We’re not picking the legal remedy today," he said. "Let’s define the scope of the problem."
A.P. Cracks Down on Unpaid Use of Articles on Web
So, all you diarists and commenters here at DailyKos: Stop linking to the AP! Try to find another source for the same information and quote those stories instead. It's really quite simple. When I searched Google News for stories about this stories, several items came up including a story posted by the AP itself. I simply chose not to use that version of the story, and instead used the New York Times version. I could just have easily used one of these:
BNET:
Sometimes you see a business move so stupid, so clearly self-damaging that you have to wonder whether someone inside the corporation is trying to torpedo it. And that’s exactly what is happening at the Associated Press, as it gears up to wage war on every single web site and person that dares use any of its content. The only problems with what and how it is doing so are that it will quickly alienate everyone it needs to work with, find that it’s in direct opposition to U.S. law and custom, and probably see just how easily activists on the web could tie it into knots.
Is AP Run By Idiots?
ABA Journal:
The Associated Press plans to add software to its articles to track how they are used online.
The aim is for those who use AP articles to pay for them, AP president and chief executive Tom Curley told the New York Times. AP maintains that just publishing an article headline and a link requires a licensing agreement, the story says.
Will Bloggers Be at Risk in AP Content Crackdown?
The Wall Street Journal:
The Associated Press, taking a hard line against Web sites that run stories without permission, said it is creating a way to track and control the distribution of its articles online.
The AP and its 1,400 member newspapers fret about how and where their articles are repurposed online, noting that bloggers and Web portals sometimes run stories without permission.
Under the new initiative, all stories will be specially formatted to enable publishers to set guidelines for how their content can be used online. A registry for stories will have what the AP called a "built-in beacon" to alert it and other publishers to use of their content, as well as tools to get compensated for it, the AP said.
AP Creates Registry to Monitor Use of Stories Online
Do you think if links dry up for the AP that they will realize that they might as well just get off the Internet? Or perhaps they will see more of this: Newspapers Cancel AP Service.