AP Harasses Own Member Over AP Youtube Videos 106
A reader writes "The Associated Press, who has been acting very bipolar lately about Google News (they get paid by Google for their content, and then complain about Google 'stealing' that content), has another issue with not knowing what their association is up to: they set up a channel on Youtube, and then threatened an AP affiliate for embedding that content."
HUH? (Score:2, Insightful)
Signing its own death warrant (Score:5, Insightful)
None of these tactics will get people to buy more newspapers. I don't know what will, but I sure don't want Google to set a precedent for linking to asshats who can't be bothered to spend 3 minutes to edit their robots.txt if they hate it so much. But of course they won't do that. They don't want a solution, they just want money.
The problem is, as with organizations like the RIAA, once you pay them off, you just fund their lawyers to go after others who want to make use of fairuse. This is as big threat to a free internet as any national firewall or net neutrality.
No future.. (Score:5, Insightful)
I just can't see a future in these organizations suing the pants off of anyone and everyone in sight. It doesn't appear to do anyone any good, not even the rights-holders benefit in the end since they just turn themselves into litigation businesses. If this isn't a reason for far-reaching copyright reform, I don't know what is.
Nothing more exciting than Big Org gets confused (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone who has worked in a medium to large organisation will know how hard it is to find out what someone in the same building is doing, let alone some affiliate.
Have we learned nothing!? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Signing its own death warrant (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that AP doesn't want to stop Google from indexing them, they just want to be paid more.
Re:Nothing more exciting than Big Org gets confuse (Score:5, Insightful)
You'd think that somewhere near the top of the list of "authorised users" would be "Our Own Goddamn YouTube channel". That part shouldn't have been difficult. That the group checking for infringement weren't aware of the legit YouTube channel, and didn't comprehend what embedding it meant, suggests that the group looking for infringements is on more of a "shoot first, don't ask questions" approach. We take it for granted that fair use is dead, but having a department seemingly set up to block all use is beyond a joke.
This can only be a good thing... (Score:4, Insightful)
AP calls for free money from Google (Score:5, Insightful)
The Associated Press has asked the government to examine Google News and other content aggregators [today.com], claiming they contribute insufficiently to their income.
"The newspapers put their content up on the web for free and then Google, the freeloading bastards, tell people where to find it. We told them to pay up or stop using our stuff, and they said OK, they'd stop using our stuff!
"We need federal regulation to bring back balance, 'balance' defined as being able to make them give us money because we want it. You'd think the Internet wasn't invented to give news agencies and record companies free money!"
The press group argues that traffic from search engines doesn't make up the cost of producing the content. "Ad revenue has collapsed, so search engine traffic doesn't bring in enough views to pay for itself. Our inability to sell ads is clearly Google's problem."
The AP suggests the exploration of new models that "require fair acknowledgement of the value that our content creates, both on our own site through advertising and 'at the edges' in the world of search and aggregation. Basically, they should just give us money because we want it. And the music industry too. How about a bailout? Go on, gi's it."
ex - news sys admin (Score:2, Insightful)
Ominous (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:AP calls for free money from Google (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem is that the AP produce newspapers
That's a bit of news I'd missed. Since when? Which newspapers do AP produce?
Re:Signing its own death warrant (Score:5, Insightful)
Interestingly enough, its generally the exact opposite. Companies pay to be listed in the yellow pages. White page listings are typically part of the standard phone service.
Yellow pages on the other hand are for pay listings. Its amusing that newspapers are getting pissed off that someone is giving them for free what they used to pay for.
The only thing they really have to bitch about is the fact that every one else is listed right next to them so they have to compete with other papers rather than knowing the person reading the article is probably only looking at their newspaper as it used to be.
Re:Signing its own death warrant (Score:4, Insightful)
None of these tactics will get people to buy more newspapers. I don't know what will
E-Paper readers and wireless delivery. Once the tech gets cheap enough to make a Kindle-like device "Free With Subscription" then the news media will finally catch up with the rest of the world.
And the trees will sleep a little easier at night.
Slavery, Plain and Simple (Score:3, Insightful)
When it became illegal to own people those that depend on slavery found new ways to own, not people, but everything about the person.
Own his land, you own him.
Bury him in debt and own his debt, you own him.
Throughout history people have alwasy sought ways to make slaves of their neighbors, now in the 21st century the method is:
Own his thoughts, you own him.
Thought crime is the new tool to make slaves of people; how dare the slaves think without permission. Think only what we tell you to think. We people exist for the benefit of the master, in this case businesses.
Goverment as king, business as the fiefs, the executives as the lords, and we the people have become intellectual share croppers; and have been returned to our proper place as slaves\pesants\serfs... Steal from the pesants and profit, steal from the master and suffer his wrath... The knights have been replaced with lawyers and history repeats itself...
Re:No future.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Contrast that with how capitalism should work - people who are most productive accumulate resources that expands their influence.
Capitalism is about people with capital having the most influence. @aurispector, they may also choose to expand productivity to develop that influence but that's not necessarily the case. Consider OPEC, often they can increase their influence by lowering production of a high demand product.
Nor is capitalism about those who are the most productive. It is about those with the most capital, or other source of power, increasing their capital. Sure a by-product can be increased financial efficiency in production within a given company but overall I think it's bad for society.
Re:since this is new policy for the AP... (Score:3, Insightful)
Seems like each hand thinks it's the only one.
Re:Ominous (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not disagreeing with you, and not trying to troll, but from the perspective of the people running news agencies or the AP, what is the new business model they should shift to?
Whether we like it or not, it takes money to cover the news and more money--though less and less lately--to deliver it. Turning it over to bloggers won't help; the majority of blogs are only commentary on news posted by other entities, and the occasional investigative blog entry, while important, is so far in the minority as to preclude them from being viable alternatives. Plus there's even less accountability for a blogger than there is for a reporter at a mainstream news outlet; at least they have to worry about their job if they really screw the pooch on their work.
In this particular case for example, I think it's essentially greed on the AP's part (and for the record I think their campaigns against Google News are IDIOTIC). However, for the sake of argument let's assume that they're actually reacting to profits lowering enough that it's going to impact their ability to cover and report on news. How do they change their business model? Increasing prices might work for a little while, except that if anybody is hurting more than the AP itself it would be the news agencies buying AP feeds. There's only so much more money you can extract from them before their "new business model" of ad-supported content fails them, they go down and you have even less revenue than you started with.
They could try to change to a subscription model. Then again, most people aren't going to go for it after they've had such a long period of essentially free news now. Plus, it's basically the model that customers are moving AWAY from by ditching their subscriptions to get their news online.
Consolidation seems like a viable option, but I personally feel there's already been far too much consolidation in news agencies. Is this really an area we wanted even as much consolidation as we have, much less more? And more to the point, if you're telling any individual business owner that his business model no longer works and his only choice is to go out of business, you're not going to get a very good reaction--even if it's ultimately good for his industry.
So yes, right now they're probably just being greedy fucks; they can probably absorb less revenues for quite some time without it having to impact their services. But not forever--so what IS the business model they should be advancing?
I don't like the way this is going any more than you do, but it's easy to comment from the sidelines and a much tougher situation if you're actually faced with it.