"Grandma and the Kids" -- The AP and Bloggers

The biggest question I have about the Associated Press's new aggressiveness toward bloggers is: why now? Seems like the train left the station years ago. If the AP was serious about protecting it copyright, it would not have so easily licensed its content to websites galore, the obvious effect of which was to widely distribute the AP's content. The AP now seems to realize that they've (a) charged to little for their content, (b) made a huge mistake in not figuring out a way to centralize, brand and distribute AP content from an AP website, and (c) has to try and put the jack back in the box somehow.

Comments

The jack goes back into the box fairly easily. As much as I hate the cliche', I think we are looking at toothpaste in the tube instead. Or maybe it is time to be innovative, and say the AP is trying to ungrate the cheese. I kinda like that.

Posted by Curtis | June 16, 2008 11:45 AM

Maybe 'unfan the shit'

Posted by P.M.T Barnum | June 16, 2008 11:51 AM

You're confusing two concepts here. There's a difference between "licensing" your content (in which case, you get paid for use), and having people just rip it off for free. AP is a news cooperative, meaning it is owned and operated by its newspaper members, which is just about every newspaper in the country. It was created and remains a business-to-business enterprise, which means it probably couldn't run its own AP web site even if it wanted to, because its members would object. I doubt that that's the goal here. I think it's just an attempt to remind people that AP content is not exactly public domain.

Besides, since almost all bloggers believe the MSM is worthless, why would they care whether they get to steal AP content, anyway?

Posted by Fred App | June 16, 2008 12:56 PM

If you don't think they can put the jack back in the box, then please explain to me where all the copyrighted content that used to show up on YouTube has gone. Where are all those free episodes from Comedy Central?

The fact is that the same search engines that make blogs and related stories infinitely easy to find can also be used by the AP to find people infringing on their copyrights. And some bloggers make money (ad revenue) quoting large segments of text from sources they have not licensed.

Posted by LFC | June 16, 2008 1:02 PM

Comedy Central ended up putting up their content for free anyway, embeddable and freely viewable, but served from their own site. I have no problem with what they have done.

Posted by jnfr | June 16, 2008 2:37 PM

Some specific cases may end up in court, and in a worst case scenario many judges will spend their taxpayer-funded time endlessly parsing and re-defining the meaning of "fair use". I suspect the final jurisprudence will be a net loss for the public interest.

Posted by Good luck AP | June 16, 2008 9:43 PM

It was created and remains a business-to-business enterprise, which means it probably couldn't run its own AP web site even if it wanted to, because its members would object.

I'm not sure this is true, but I am sure that everything rides on this. The AP (and Reuters) are going to have to figure out the new business model. And they will, because what those orginizations provide is way too valuable...and thus profitable. The sycophancy of the AP on domestic policy will not be paid for, but the legwork they to on foreign stuff will be.

My politics verges on socialist, but I'm pretty confident the market will sort this one out.

Posted by nolaboyd | June 16, 2008 9:59 PM