AP Proposes ASCAP-Like Fees For the News 146
eldavojohn writes "Techdirt directed my attention to an article where the AP discussed pressure from new devices and mediums today giving them cause to create a clearinghouse for news — much like the music industry's ASCAP — to 'establish an enforcement and payment system.' You'll notice that the story I am linking to and quoting is an AP story ... would Slashdot then be required to pay these fees? We have seen DMCA take down notices and fee discussions before from the AP."
Donation Link needed (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe that would work better?
Re:What does Obama have to do with it? (Score:2, Interesting)
Hey, is that different than stuff pulled by the Bush White House [wikipedia.org]? Or for that matter, Alaska Senate candidate Joe Miller having his security team handcuff reporters for asking questions he didn't want to answer [alaskadispatch.com]?
Flawed logic (Score:5, Interesting)
ASCAP exists to collect royalties for creative works. "News" articles are a collection of facts (at least that's what they are supposed to be), and those facts are not copyrightable. This is the reason in the old days news papers busted their asses trying to "scoop" on another. They knew once the information was out there, it was fair game for anyone to report on it.
Opinion columns, features, photos etc are a different matter. But simply reporting the fact that AP has cooked up a hair-brained scheme to try to extract money out of Google - and linking to your source for that "fact" - wouldn't require a royalty payment in any sane copyright law.
I don't particularly like the ASCAP idea, but... (Score:4, Interesting)
reporting news outside the comfort of our homes does cost money. I don't like ASCAP because they usually go ape-shit over stuff like how many radios you have in your workplace or the radio station you play as your music on hold.
I do like the idea of a non-profit being a clearinghouse for news reports and media outlets including bloggers can become paying members and as such have access to the late-breaking news first. This can be done without threatening anyone's fair use rights, and allow reporters in the field to continue to have the necessary resources they need.
Re:Even better: (Score:4, Interesting)
Dude the AP already gets money from the Govt for operations.
They can charge fees as soon as they give back ALL the money they have taken from the public.
Oh and covering a war? get your OWN ass over there and your own armor.. No you're not riding in the Tank with us nor will we waste bullets to keep your butts alive... OR we can charge you a fee for that.
Problem is our current leaders are too stupid to do this.
Old business model (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm pretty much convinced that the current generation of managers and corporate officers in media companies are just not capable of changing enough to forge a new business model in the internet age.
A while ago I would have predicted that they'd eventually have to give up their attempts to slow the change, or to find ways to keep their pay for content models working the same way, and eventually start experimenting to find something new or listen to their younger, more flexible peers.
Now, however, I'm thinking that they just can't change... change in their companies won't happen without a rollover of management, like in so many other organizations run by the "me" generation. They won't give up and they won't give in. They'll have to die off.
More to the point of the article, I predict if all news articles get charged for from the wire services, there'll be a period of rampant ignoring of the fee, followed by a period of cut and paste disguising of the origin of an article, or paraphrasing to hide a source, followed by independent sourcing of news from readers local to a story, and maybe eventually a new kind of news reporter, whose business model I don't know, but who travels the world collecting news to publish on the Internet.
Maybe in some part of all this we'll get back to unbiased, true news reporting and not political spin. I hope so.
Re:And so the AP pulls the trigger... (Score:5, Interesting)
I keep hearing this, but what do you plan on replacing traditional news with? You may not have noticed, but all the bloggers and sites like Slashdot or Reddit? They're all aggregators. They don't investigate news in any traditional sense. They troll around newspaper and news sites and read stuff. If they're a full on aggregator like /. then they just post links to the stuff they read (or that people submitted to them). If they're a blogger then they write an opinion piece and share the info out. When a liberal or conservative blogger "breaks a story" it just means that they read it in some local newspaper. They were the first nationally read source to break the story, but mostly they didn't actually create it. With a very, very small number of exceptions (usually where some source calls a blogger and gives them info), these guys don't produce news. They consume it and regurgitate it at you (Which sounds really gross, I didn't necessarily mean that in a bad way).
If traditional news sources disappear, there will be no revolution where "new media" wanks will take over and do thing better and more accurately. They will have nothing to comment on. There will be no news for them to "break". Real investigative news requires a staff and a budget. You can't fly to Afghanistan to report on the ongoing war effort using the money you got from Google ad-sense this month. You can't run a month long investigate effort into discovering that the local government is embezzling the city retirement fund when you have to produce a new blog entry twice a day to pay the bandwidth bill.
Re:Donation Link needed (Score:3, Interesting)
These studies are all bullshit. They compare people making $40k in LA with people making that in bumblefuck Iowa. No shit the guy in Iowa donates more his rent is a tenth as much. They claim donations to churches are charity instead of a voluntary fee for service.
Re:Even better: (Score:3, Interesting)
All I am implying here is that if you have no problem with allowing two people to fill out paperwork to provide the same protections as marriage then you should have no problem allowing three people to fill out paperwork to provide the same protections as marriage, so long as they are all consenting adults.
I have no problem with either.