Tribune Company The Latest (And Biggest) In A Growing List To Drop Associated Press

from the ouch dept

While the Associated Press was wasting time stupidly threatening to sue bloggers for pointing people to AP stories without paying, perhaps the folks there should have been paying a bit more attention to actually making sure its business model worked. As we've been noting, over the past few years, its strategy has put it in pretty much direct competition with its members (the AP is made up of numerous member newspapers).

That's creating problems, as we've seen a variety of newspapers have recently been refusing to renew their contracts, notifying the AP that they don't want to participate anymore. There have been some notable names, from the Minneapolis Star-Tribune to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, but none of the "major" newspaper companies had bailed... until now. The Tribune Company, publishers of the Chicago Tribune, the LA Times, the Baltimore Sun and others has surprised many by telling the AP it's not renewing. That could be the big domino, as many other newspapers may follow suit. The article here notes even that some newspapers have been experimenting with picking days when they try to publish without a single AP story to see how it goes.

What's amazing is that, so far, it doesn't seem like the Associated Press recognizes that there's a real problem. They simply seem to shrug off each defection. At some point, the AP needs to realize that it needs to change, rather drastically, if it's going to survive. While the AP isn't like an ordinary company -- it's a non-profit cooperative made up of member news organizations -- that doesn't mean it doesn't need to have a working business model. Without that, and with big members dropping like flies, it won't be able to exist at all.

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Associated Press: Well, Now That That's All Done With...

from the hey,-wait-a-second... dept

The Associated Press "conversation" with bloggers keeps getting more bizarre. Yesterday, it met with the guy that Rogers Cadenhead from the Drudge Retort asked to represent him in dealing with the AP. This was the guy that the AP falsely suggested was going to help them set up "guidelines" for bloggers. That was never true. He was merely there to represent Cadenhead's side of the story. And the result? A statement from the AP saying that the matter is now closed. Seriously. No details. No "conversation." Just wiping its hands of the whole thing:

In response to questions about the use of Associated Press content on the Drudge Retort web site, the AP was able to provide additional information to the operator of the site, Rogers Cadenhead, on Thursday. That information was aimed at enabling Mr. Cadenhead to bring the contributed content on his site into conformance with the policy he earlier set for his contributors. Both parties consider the matter closed.

In addition, the AP has had a constructive exchange of views this week with a number of interested parties in the blogging community about the relationship between news providers and bloggers and that dialogue will continue. The resolution of this matter illustrates that the interests of bloggers can be served while still respecting the intellectual property rights of news providers.

Let's unpack this a bit. First off, and most importantly, I'm quite happy that the AP and Cadenhead have worked out their differences. It's never any fun to be on the receiving end of a legal threat -- and the most important thing of all was making sure that the situation was settled. However, the rest of the AP's statement is troublesome.

First, for an organization claiming that it wants to be a part of the conversation (and some have noted that "conversations" rarely begin with a legal threat), never actually coming out and talking in public seems quite problematic. So far, the public communication from the AP has been (1) identical cut-and-pasted comments on a number of blogs, (2) a couple of quotes given to reporters, (3) possibly some private discussions with unnamed bloggers, and (4) a private meeting with a representative for the Drudge Retort. There wasn't a single attempt to have a public discussion. There's no explanation of the resulting "agreement" or how it might impact other bloggers who quote the AP. There isn't even a single indication from the AP that it recognizes why so many people are upset.

That's not a resolution. That's denial.

Update: Rogers Cadenhead has posted his thoughts on the discussion with the Associated Press, and while he does seem relieved that his involvement is now cleared, he doesn't seem optimistic about the future:

If AP's guidelines end up like the ones they shared with me, we're headed for a Napster-style battle on the issue of fair use.

In other words, so much for the "conversation" that the AP has supposedly been having. It still won't acknowledge what fair use clearly allows and it still won't admit that it was wrong -- or openly discuss its position in public.

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Associated Press: Fair Use Limits You To Four Words; Five Words Costs $12.50

from the make-it-stop dept

As we wait with bated breath for the Associated Press to come down from the mountain with its own rules for "fair use for bloggers," Patrick Nielsen Hayden gives us a sense of what the AP considers fair use (found via Boing Boing). Apparently, for quite some time, the AP has had up a page that lists out prices for quoting AP text. I will quote the list prices, and hope I don't get a DMCA takedown:

• 5-25 words: $ 12.50
• 26-50 words: $ 17.50
• 51-100 words: $ 25.00
• 101-250 words: $ 50.00
• 251 words and up: $ 100.00

Oh, and it gets better. The AP claims that it can revoke the license at any time if it feels you're saying something negative about the Associated Press: "Publisher reserves the right to terminate this Agreement at any time if Publisher or its agents finds Your use of the licensed Content to be offensive and/or damaging to Publisher’s reputation."

Now, these are the terms that the AP has had on its site for some time -- but they explain why the AP went after the Drudge Retort for quoting less than 100 words. To the AP, that was a violation requiring a $25 license. So, while some believe that those criticizing the AP are overreacting, I'd argue that's not the case at all. This is not, as suggested, a one-time thing. This is an ongoing pattern of misuse of copyright law by the AP. And it's been pointed out to the AP in the past that these actions are wrong -- and it did nothing to change the AP's behavior. Instead, it seems to have only emboldened the AP.

Besides, it now appears that the AP's way of having this "conversation" with bloggers on what is AP-acceptable "fair use" is to meet with some guy who represents some blogging "group" I've never heard of. That group does not represent bloggers and it certainly doesn't speak for all of us in reaching some sort of "agreement." If the AP really wants to engage with the critics, why doesn't it come out and talk to those of us criticizing its actions? So far, the only engagement has been to cut and past the same comment on a bunch of blog sites... Other than that, it has only spoken to reporters about this issue.

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Associated Press Digs Its Own Grave Deeper; Wants To Create Its Own Fair Use Rules

from the that's-not-how-it-works dept

On Friday, the story about the Associated Press threatening a blogger for using short snippets of AP stories with links back to the original as somehow being copyright infringement got a ton of attention. It was a clear case of the AP overstepping its bounds -- which goes against everything the organization claimed it would do. As more and more people complained, the AP figured it needed to do something to respond to the complaints -- though, it's choice of somethings proved rather ill-conceived.

First, it went around to the various blogs that had responded to the AP's actions and posted a cut-and-paste comment on all of them. It's rather amusing that their own response to people cutting and pasting their articles is to cut and paste the identical comment everywhere. Of course, in doing so, that comment didn't actually engage with any of the blogs, and in our case, at least, referenced other blog posts that we had not referenced or even read. In other words, the AP reacted as if these various blogs were all working together as a single organization. We're not. Even worse, this comment included what amounted to a sales pitch, suggesting that bloggers should "license" AP content.

Second, the AP announced that it would "rethink" its policies about blogging and try to set guidelines for what is and what is not fair use quoting of its articles. Unfortunately for the Associated Press, that is not how copyright law works. The holder of the copyright does not get to decide what is fair use. That, after all, is the whole point of fair use -- that it doesn't involve the copyright holder in the first place.

Third, the AP chose not to stop demanding that the Drudge Retort take down the various blog posts it had sent DMCA notices over. In other words, despite this "rethinking" it's still pursuing the same brain-dead, internet-unfriendly policy. Clearly, no one over at the Associated Press realizes how badly they screwed this one up.

So, again, we'll reiterate what we said on Friday: on any AP story we find that is worthy of a post, we'll now actively search for alternative sources to receive the link. We won't totally rule out linking to the AP, but since it seems so against getting traffic from other sites, it will now be a link of last resort. It makes you wonder if the news organizations who license AP content (the ones who are the actual beneficiaries of these links) are going to start telling the AP to knock it off.

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Google Finally Hosting News On Its Site: Will Newspapers Get Pissed Off At AP Now?

from the ah,-the-shifting-marketplace dept

Earlier this month, we noted that it had been a year since Google had done a deal with the Associated press and there appeared to be nothing to show for it. That led to speculation that the deal really had nothing to do with with some new "news" product, and it was really about paying off the AP so it didn't sue Google for linking to AP stories (the way some other news organizations had done). That seemed strange because it was quite difficult to see what the Associated Press or anyone else had to argue about if Google News was providing their news partners more traffic. However, the snickering over a lack of any real project seems to have kicked Google into action, and they've just announced that they're going to start hosting news content on their own site from the AP and a few other news organizations the company has done deals with. Amusingly, I was unable to find the AP version of this story hosted on Google itself, but did find the Canadian Press version. There don't appear to be any advertisements on the Google hosted version, but there are links to "related news" -- which makes a lot of sense. Of course, if I were a publisher partner of the Associated Press, I'd actually be really upset by this deal -- but directed at the Associated Press, rather than at Google. This deal is likely to lower traffic to other sites that republish AP reports. So all those partners get no benefit from the deal and actually lose out on traffic. If there are newspapers who want to get upset about Google News, they should get upset at the AP for basically giving a bunch of their traffic directly to Google.

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