Follow Slashdot stories on Twitter

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Google News

AP Harasses Own Member Over AP Youtube Videos 106

Posted by samzenpus from the mine-all-mine dept.
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."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

AP Harasses Own Member Over AP Youtube Videos More

AP Harasses Own Member Over AP Youtube Videos

Comments Filter:

  • Car analogy (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 09, 2009 @08:01AM (#27516415)

    You pay a parking license to go to someone's garage, and then get towed for parking in someone's garage!

  • If this is an attempt to steal money from Google, it certainly is stupid.

  • HUH? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by GreenTech11 ( 1471589 )
    Who is Associated Press' tech consultant, they either need to listen to them, or actually hire one. They also need a lawyer who knows what that new fangled invention 'the Internet' is and also how people relate to it.

  • Signing its own death warrant (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rolfwind ( 528248 ) on Thursday April 09, 2009 @08:03AM (#27516441)

    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.

    • Re:Signing its own death warrant (Score:5, Insightful)

      by the_arrow ( 171557 ) on Thursday April 09, 2009 @08:16AM (#27516533) Homepage

      The problem is that AP doesn't want to stop Google from indexing them, they just want to be paid more.

      • And of course, presenting it as an IP rights issue as the AP have done makes it seem like AP have a god-given right to that extra cash.

        • And of course, presenting it as an IP rights issue as the AP have done makes it seem like AP have a god-given right to that extra cash.

          You mean just like the RIAA/MPAA?

        • *nods* yup.

          Quality of reporting is better at Reuters [reuters.com] too.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by HTH NE1 ( 675604 )

          Pete Helmes: The Marxists are denying the people of Latin America their right to eat Mr. Chicken. And, they're denying Mr. Chicken his human right to franchise and make a profit.
          Scott Dantley: Well, I sure as hell don't want some made-in-Moscow Mr. Cabbage Roll shoved down my throat against my will.
          Bob Nixon: Absolutely. Those peasants deserve the dignity and human right to eat Mr. Chicken when and where they please.
          Pete Helmes: And Jack, when that right is threatened in the Western Hemisphere, it becomes a

      • The problem is that AP doesn't want to stop Google from indexing them, they just want to be paid more.

        No, they just want Google, the young whippersnappers of the media world, to get off their lawn.

      • Re:Signing its own death warrant (Score:5, Interesting)

        by lucas_picador ( 862520 ) on Thursday April 09, 2009 @09:46AM (#27517451)

        The problem is that AP doesn't want to stop Google from indexing them, they just want to be paid more.

        Exactly. Like I said in the AP story two days ago:

        It's even more ridiculous and pathological than that: the AP is simultaneously whining about how aggregators link to their articles and also about how search engines DON'T link to their articles. This is typical schizophrenia from an industry that is in hysterical denial because the world has changed and their business model no longer works. They can't even articulate what they want; they just want to go back to the way things used to be, when Mommy used to play with them and feed them all day. Embarrassingly infantile.

        A friend of mine tells stories about her little brother, who used to hate taking a bath as a little kid, alternating between "I'm freezing!" and "It's burning my skin off!" every few seconds as excuses to try to get out of the tub.

      • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward

        "I hate you!" [thud]
        "I hate you.... because you're Google! [thud]
        "Because you're stealing our content!" [thud]
        "Because you make more money... and you've been paying us for our stories..." [thud]
        "...and you bring us more traffic to our site...which increases our profits..." [thud]
        "...and I really want to be more like you..." [thud]
        "...and I'm really attracted to your site..." [thud]
        "...and your skin is so soft..." [thud]
        [thud]

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by isomeme ( 177414 )

        Perhaps we should extend the robots.txt format to support a price-to-index attribute.

    • Re:Signing its own death warrant (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Alzheimers ( 467217 ) on Thursday April 09, 2009 @10:39AM (#27518163)

      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.

      • That'd be nice, although I'd like to have one reader that would accept delivery from multiple sources, rather than being required to have a "Boston Globe reader" and a separate "New York Times reader" etc.

        Another alternative would be something I remember seeing in an episode of Babylon 5. Captain Sheridan went to the "Universe Today" terminal, placed yesterday's copy into a slot for recycling, and received his printed-on-demand copy (which I assume was customized to include just the sections in which he wa

      • E-Paper readers and wireless delivery.

        I doubt that. One of the advantages of a newspaper is its disposability. If you take it on the bus and leave it behind or it gets wet or dropped on the floor, no big deal. (Not to mention its uses for lining the bird cage and lining the floor while painting.)

        Any wireless device will not have this, and I think it's a big part of the appeal of a newspaper. There's nothing there to keep track of or carry around, when you're done reading or tired of it

      • 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.

        My local paper has a Twitter account [twitter.com] and posts links to new stories as they publish them online. I don't know how well it'll work out, but at least they're embracing new ideas.

  • No future.. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by aurispector ( 530273 ) on Thursday April 09, 2009 @08:04AM (#27516445)

    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.

    • I can see a future for these organizations. It's just not a very pretty one.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      If this isn't a reason for far-reaching copyright reform, I don't know what is.

      True but be careful what you wish for. There are some extremely rich vested interests who would like nothing more than to be given the chance to find additional revenue streams by legal manipulation.

      That's a problem with ill-gotten gains in general - they give additional financial leverage to the very people you don't want to give it to.

      Contrast that with how capitalism should work - people who are most productive accumulate re

      • You aren't kidding.

        Contrast that with how capitalism should work - people who are most productive accumulate resources that expands their influence.

        Don't you mean "expands their productivity"? Expanding influence is what we have now.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by pbhj ( 607776 )

        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

        • Capitalism is not necessarily harmful for society, nor is communism; in practice both are indeed deleterious due to the fact that they are always co-opted into some form of oligarchy.

          • Capitalism is not necessarily harmful for society, nor is communism; in practice both are indeed deleterious due to the fact that they are always co-opted into some form of oligarchy.

            To group capitalism with communism is naive in the extreme.

            Uncontrolled capitalism may have deleterious aspects, but it's nothing compared to a system which essentially denies the right to personal property. Capitalism in it's simplest form, in which an entrepreneur using his profits to expand is business, harnesses an individual's self interest and ambitions and rewards initiative and effort. Communism has no such mechanism.

            Communism has never been used as anything but a cover for dictatorship, and compl

            • Humans are social animals. Humans have progressed from cave dwellers by working together for common goals, not by hoarding property. This is a recent invention in human history.

              • You have to be kidding me. I'm certainly not advocating people take self-interest to an extreme. There's obvious benefits to cooperation and healthy market competition helps keep the excesses in check, but consider this: one guy goes out and works his ass off and hustles every day of his life while another guy sits on his ass all day. Why should we have a system where the busy guy supports the lazy guy? I don't mind paying into a system that provides support for those that can't help themselves, but whe

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by HiThere ( 15173 )

              You don't know what you're talking about. Either that, or you've adopted a popular media definition of communism.

              Now it's true that the philosophical descendants of Marx+Lenin were all dictatorial, that isn't the origin of communism. We can't really trace the origin of communism, but it predates the Roman Empire, and is probably the ancestral form of human government. The problem is that it doesn't scale. It works fine in a family. Acceptably in a small village. Poorly in a large village. And unaccept

              • Communism? Regardless of it's antecedents it's Marx & Lenin we inevitably have to deal with in this day. I've read Marx and found it entirely lacking any connection to basic human motivations. Any parent of a two year old knows the concept of personal property starts early. As you say, communism fails at any scale larger than the family.

                I agree that any economic system presents problems when applied in large scale. The key for capitalism is the existence of healthy free market competition. It's obvio

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by HiThere ( 15173 )

                  The problem of energy linkage is simple:
                  If we run out of energy, we lose our technology. Without technology, most people will die.

                  The problem of labor is that automation is becoming increasingly intelligent. Cars that park themselves are already on the market. Semi-automated grocery store checkouts have begun to appear. Etc. Each such advance eliminate categories of jobs.

                  For some reason you also seem to think that corporations and automation will produces some sort of unholy, machine controlled dystopia. This is where you...

                  It think it has the potential to produce a dystopia. It also has potentials in the other direction. It all depends whether the owne

                  • The problem of energy linkage is simple: If we run out of energy, we lose our technology. Without technology, most people will die.

                    We are not anywhere near to running out of energy. The recent gas price spike spawned interest in a plethora of alternative energy technologies. Unfortunately the price of oil crashed again, but those technologies still exist. Wind, solar, hydro, nuclear are all available. When the price of energy makes them economically viable they'll come into use. Energy prices follow the law of supply and demand like everything else. Stating that everyone is going to die soon because we're running out of energy is

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Miseph ( 979059 )

          "Capitalism is about people with capital having the most influence."

          Not quite. I think the word you are looking for is actually "plutocracy". One could say that the latter logically follows from the former*, but that doesn't make them the same thing.

          "@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."

          This is a critical flaw in capitalis

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by pbhj ( 607776 )

            I'd prepared a very humorous, insightful and engaging response and my browser arsed up on me .. so this'll have to do.

            "Capitalism is about people with capital having the most influence."

            Not quite. I think the word you are looking for is actually "plutocracy". One could say that the latter logically follows from the former*, but that doesn't make them the same thing.

            Plutocracy is a dominant twist within our society which has a largely capitalist fabric but does not (as you go on to say) reflect a true capitalism. Just as no truly communist society has emerged. Western society is as capitalist (with it's social welfare and bailouts, etc.) as Soviet Russia was communist.

            "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."

            What? Capital is gained precisely by increasing production and decreasing cost. Your statement of how capitalism works is completely wrong on its face.

            I was looking at an individual level. If you have a lot of money, you may have been pr

    • That's rediculous.

      The AP does ONE THING. It licenses news stories to other people to broadcast/print. The sole reason for its existence is to license out content.

      That means... anyone who doesn't pay the licensing fees and uses the content is liable to get sued.

      Now in this case it's stupid because the party getting the cease and desist was an AP subscriber and also within his legal rights to share an AP video. To me this sounds more like a left hand not knowing what the right is doing.

      But if anything the

  • Nothing more exciting than Big Org gets confused (Score:5, Insightful)

    by khakipuce ( 625944 ) on Thursday April 09, 2009 @08:04AM (#27516451) Homepage Journal
    It's bound to happen, set up a department to check web content and they will find your own content apparently copied. Tracing that back through to some original poster and then identifying that poster as legitimate or not is going to be difficult.

    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.

    • Re:Nothing more exciting than Big Org gets confuse (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Sockatume ( 732728 ) on Thursday April 09, 2009 @08:23AM (#27516573)
      Tracing that back through to some original poster and then identifying that poster as legitimate or not is going to be difficult

      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.
    • I once interviewed for a job at a MLM's headquarters. One of the major responsibilities was to make sure the independent reps weren't implying they were the real company on the web. Considering the size of the AP, I don't find it unreasonable that they would employ someone to search for copyright infringement.

  • Have we learned nothing!? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mc1138 ( 718275 ) on Thursday April 09, 2009 @08:14AM (#27516527) Homepage
    If the RIAA has taught us anything, no one likes strong arm tactics and poorly thought out legal maneuvering. Seriously, suing an affiliate? That will really help them turn around the economic slump by attracting a large customer base. Seriously, give me a break.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Rich0 ( 548339 )

      I think the issue is that these companies don't realize how they're endangering their own reputations with these kinds of mass-litigation campaigns.

      In most companies ordinary company employees don't go sending out C&D letters - or filing lawsuits. If somebody notices something amiss it goes way up the chain of command. Most likely the CEO would personally approve an action like this with input from counsel before taking this kind of step.

      The problem is that when a company decides to get agreesive with

  • This can only be a good thing... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by castironpigeon ( 1056188 ) on Thursday April 09, 2009 @08:34AM (#27516675)
    Necessity is the mother of invention. There'd be no changing a broken system if crises like this didn't come up and stress it. I'm curious to see how much further this can go (in general, not just regarding AP) before some really big shit hits the fan.

    • Necessity may be the mother of invention but laziness is the father.

      Nothing better will come along until they find a way that's easier "for them". Inevitably however that system will be hard "for us".

      This is how we get crap like DRM and such.

  • 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)

    by star3am ( 1151041 )
    these guys got their heads so far up their own arses, they don't have a clue. Nothing will fix their current financial crisis, they brought it on themselves. Thriving on bad news, and candy coating it just to make another buck from a news paper. Serves them right, assholes

    • Re: (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Mod parent +5 Hindsightful.
    • Hmm.. I think you are one of the first people I've encountered to suggest that it was anything other than just the internet. At first I blew off your opinion, but now that I think about it , you might be right. The newspapers content was designed to maximize revenue under a different climate where all news was difficult to find. So they needed sensational news to sell and stupid human interest stories to cover up the lack of actual news. When news became more widely available through the internet and cable

      • I wasn't even paying attention, but that's precisely what happened to them. They're still reporting my grandparents' news. And quite frankly, I don't care. They so rarely talk about anything I care about that I've basically never paid attention to them. When they attempt to talk about something I care about, they muck it up so badly that the result is useless or worse than useless by being outright misleading. If they can avoid that trap, by some miracle, they still screw it up by reporting just the fa

  • Ominous (Score:5, Insightful)

    by agorist_apostle ( 1491899 ) on Thursday April 09, 2009 @08:47AM (#27516779)
    It worries me when the free flow of political and economic information is going to start becoming the newest IP/DRM battleground because people who produce information simply cannot wrap their minds around the idea that information is now cheaply and easily reproducible and their old business models are defunct. All sorts of de facto censorship could very easily occur now under the guide of "protecting their business," especially given the tight mingling of media companies, the government, banks, etc.

    • Re:Ominous (Score:5, Interesting)

      by je ne sais quoi ( 987177 ) on Thursday April 09, 2009 @09:54AM (#27517593)
      Let's hope that these organizations all go bankrupt before that. I heard once that often in repressive situations, no reform or anything like that really happens until the progenitors are all removed from power and sometimes that only happens when they die of old age. So how long do we need to wait for people who grew up with the internet and free information to come into positions of power? I'm in my early 30s and I was surfing bbs' while growing up, so maybe another ten years or so, so when people like me are in their 40s?
      • That's an excellent point...I'm in my late 30s, grew up around computers and electronics, too, so I think you're probably right. The problem is still that some people look at information exchange and propagation and see nothing but $$$, like those aholes who try to make money off of freeware or think of the worst cockamamie schemes to extract dollars from people. One thing that gives me a lot of hope is the growth of social computing, like Facebook, which I see as leading the general public to being fully

    • Even in colonial times.

      One person bought a newspaper, and then proceeded to tell the story to all of his friends, associates, etc...

      It wasn't until the small-town atmosphere went away that newspapers were able to become the big businesses they are (were?!) today. News readership requires a *certain level* of interaction - too much, and no one reads the stories; too little, and there's no point in reading the stories (with whom would you discuss the news?). The problem is that getting the mix right is

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Dhalka226 ( 559740 )

      people who produce information simply cannot wrap their minds around the idea that information is now cheaply and easily reproducible and their old business models are defunct

      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 h

      • 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).

        The original poster cannot read. The Associated Press is not going after Google, which is one of their customers who PAYS them for content. However I guess it became a frequently asked question by Google News users [pcmag.com]. The person pointing the finger at Google for stealing content is Rupert Murdoch [pcmag.com]. Rupert Murdoch is the very old CEO and chairman o

  • Situations like this (and all sorts of permutations seem to crop up everyday) really illustrate how much of a Gordian Knot IP is.

    You all know what the solution is.

  • Charlie Rose (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Anyone see the CEO on Charlie Rose last night?

    Rose asked him for details on how he was planning on executing the control that he said they wanted.

    His response was long, but the most important part was one word: Beacon

    He wants to "embed a beacon" in the news to let them know where it is being used.

    Um. Good luck with that...

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by disccomp ( 1454521 )
      Yeah, then they could just Google their "beacon" and find all the sites that posted their article; hey, maybe then Google could start charging THEM for search.

  • Clearly, any business that doesn't want to get sued needs to stay far away from AP. Clearly it's become dangerous to do business with them.

    I guess if the AP wants to stay in the news business, they'd better start shopping for a printing press.

  • This is clearly some ladder-climbing scheme by some jr. executive.

    When the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing, it's time to cut them both off.

  • So big in fact, the right hand doesn't know what the left one is up to.

  • Slavery, Plain and Simple (Score:3, Insightful)

    by kenp2002 ( 545495 ) on Thursday April 09, 2009 @10:40AM (#27518189) Homepage Journal

    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...

Slashdot Top Deals

1 + 1 = 3, for large values of 1.

Close