Inside the AP's Plan To Security-Wrap Its News Content 138
suraj.sun writes with an excerpt from this story at Ars Technica that the "Associated Press, reeling from the newspaper apocalypse, has a new plan to 'wrap' and 'protect' its content though a 'digital permissions framework.' The Associated Press last week rolled out its brave new plan to 'apply protective format to news.' The AP's news registry will 'tag and track all AP content online to assure compliance with terms of use,' and it will provide a 'platform for protect, point, and pay.' That's a lot of 'p'-prefaced jargon, but it boils down to a sort of DRM for news — 'enforcement,' in AP-speak."
I thought Slashdot was filled with geeks (Score:5, Informative)
If it were, then whoever moderated this post would have read the Ars Technica story. The "wrapper" and DRM are nothing but an HTML microformat, which enables categorizing and parsing, but has zilch to do with enforcement.
Re:I thought Slashdot was filled with geeks (Score:5, Insightful)
You actually expect either the submitter or the editor to read the article instead of just mischaracterizing the story by just making shit up?
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I did read the story which is how I know it's just making shit up. There is no DRM here or enforcement and as such the summary is a complete load of crap.
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I'm confused.
Can't they search for that embedded metadata, locate I've illegally-copied their stories to my website, and then issue a cease-and-desist notice?
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The quote is "... manage and control digital use of their content, by providing detailed metrics on content consumption, payment services and enforcement support.", which is Digital Rights Management (DRM).
The word "enforcement" is in the quote, so how has this "zilch to do with enforcement"?
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Did you even bother to read the Ars Technica article to see what the GP was talking about?
Re:I thought Slashdot was filled with geeks (Score:5, Informative)
This has zilch to do with enforcement because the proposal contains no technical method of enforcement. Nothing is encrypted and nothing is protected in any way. The 'system' is basically, AP tags news items and you are on your honor to respect those tags. That's it.
Robot Scrapers (Score:4, Interesting)
This has zilch to do with enforcement because the proposal contains no technical method of enforcement.
Not technical, no. Their big enforcement plan is...lawyers!
See, the AP is convinced that its Public Enemy Number 1 is robot scrapers. You know them...cruddy sites that blindly copy the HTML from legitimate news sites and archive them, in the hopes that someday, when the stories have long since fallen off the CNN.com and nytimes.com headline pages, someone from a search engine will stumble across the story and click on an add, thereby generating revenue. Like the ones that copy Wikipedia articles and add advertisements.
The plan is to basically embed some sort of web bug in the HTML, which will help AP identify the scrapers, which will allow them to file an honest lawsuit, in which the infringing scraper will show up in court, hat in hand, and beg forgiveness.
This is sad for several reasons.
1. The AP believes that these scrapers are actually a serious threat to the AP's revenue stream.
2. The AP believes that the people who run these scrapers won't be able to strip their tracking bugs out
3. The AP believes that it'll be able to find and sue the operators and make them stop, instead of just driving them into jurisdictions that don't care.
4. The AP is confusing these scrapers with legitimate aggregators, like Google News, and legitimate bloggers, and thus making lots of enemies
Re:Robot Scrapers (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Robot Scrapers (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you're wrong on the last count. I think they are thinking primarily of 'legitimate' aggregators. I think their entire plan is predicated on being able to coerce large search engines to comply with their rules of behaviour with regards to their material.
I agree that this is technically naive and suicidal as a business tactic. Even if the large search engines agree to whatever conditions are put on the use of the content, they'll only do so to the extent that playing nice serves their needs. The only leverage AP would have in case of non-adherence to their rules is the suicide option - cutting off access to their own content.
But vested interests the world over have demonstrated their capacity for self-inflicted damage and, more to the point, their ability to damage others on their way down.
Count on a large-scale political push to 'protect their rights' - and to enumerate those rights in the most profit-making way possible, even if that means trashing fair use entirely.
Count as well on Google, Microsoft and whoever else is running a top-tier US-based search engine to compromise themselves (and their service) in order to avoid getting kicked out of the boys' club that is the American corporate establishment.
And count on the anarcho-geeks of the world to have the entire process deconstructed, reverse-engineered and made a mockery of within about 4 days, too. They will be litigated and even prosecuted for their pains.
The net result will be that AP's demise will be delayed by a few months, and the development of a robust, gift-based online economy will be delayed by some multiple of that.
Re:I thought Slashdot was filled with geeks (Score:5, Informative)
FTFA: You'll be forgiven if you find it difficult to square the reality of hNews with the AP's pronouncements about it. Ed Felten, the eminent Princeton computer security researcher, couldn't figure it out, either. [Felten blogs that] "hNews is a handy way of annotating news stories with information about the author, dateline, and so on. But it doesn't 'encapsulate' anything in a 'wrapper,' nor does it do much of anything to facilitate metering, monitoring, or paywalls."
IOW, zilch to do with enforcement. In fact, it sounds to me like just enough bullshit to make a DMCA circumvention claim in court, or better yet, send out a bunch of threatening letters to bloggers. (How very RIAA of them.)
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God forbid they make money of something they produced.
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As always, the problem isn't with them making money, but rather how they deal with those they consider "obstacles" to their business model.
And abusing DMCA takedown notices ranks pretty high on most of our "worst ways to deal with competition" lists so if they do that, the flamefest that's sure to follow will be completely deserved.
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Internet Business [feeddistiller.com] Feed @ Feed Distiller [feeddistiller.com]
Link to the article (Score:5, Funny)
Associated Press [ap.org]
The Associated Press Board of Directors today directed The Associated Press to create a news registry that will tag and track all AP content online to assure compliance with terms of use. The system will register key identifying information about each piece of content that AP distributes as well as the terms of use of that content, and employ a built-in beacon to notify AP about how the content is used.
"What we are building here is a way for good journalism to survive and thrive," said Dean Singleton, chairman of the AP Board of Directors and vice chairman and CEO of MediaNews Group Inc. "The AP news registry will allow our industry to protect its content online, and will assure that we can continue to provide original, independent and authoritative journalism at a time when the world needs it more than ever."
The registry will initially cover all AP text content online, and be extended to AP member content in early 2010. Eventually, it will be expanded to cover photos and video as well. AP will fund development and operation of the registry through 2010, until it becomes self-sustaining.
The board announced in April, at its annual meeting, that the Cooperative would launch an industry initiative to protect news content from unauthorized use online. At its meeting today, at AP headquarters, the board voted to approve creation of a news registry that will serve as the foundation of that initiative.
The registry will employ a microformat for news developed by AP and which was endorsed two weeks ago by the Media Standards Trust, a London-based nonprofit research and development organization that has called on news organizations to adopt consistent news formats for online content. The microformat will essentially encapsulate AP and member content in an informational âoewrapperâ that includes a digital permissions framework that lets publishers specify how their content is to be used online and which also supplies the critical information needed to track and monitor its usage.
The registry also will enable content owners and publishers to more effectively manage and control digital use of their content, by providing detailed metrics on content consumption, payment services and enforcement support. It will support a variety of payment models, including pay walls.
In other action, the AP Board also voted to approve rate assessment reductions for broadcast members of the Cooperative. Under the plan, AP will reduce local TV members' basic text assessments by 10 percent in 2010. The amount of rate reduction per station varies depending on the level of services received. At its annual meeting in April, The Associated Press announced assessment reductions for member newspapers, the second year rates were reduced. AP member radio rates were adjusted several years ago to include added discounts, day-part service options and barter pricing.
About The AP
The Associated Press is the essential global news network, delivering fast, unbiased news from every corner of the world to all media platforms and formats. Founded in 1846, AP today is the largest and most trusted source of independent news and information. On any given day, more than half the worldâ(TM)s population sees news from AP.
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About The AP The Associated Press is the essential global news network, delivering fast, unbiased news...
Mod +1 Funny.
AP unbiased? (Score:2, Interesting)
Written by AP no doubt. Someone should show this to their editors, AP has been carrying Republican water [mediamatters.org] for years.
Re:Link to the article (Score:4, Funny)
In other news today, anonymous sources at the popular nerd news aggregator Slashdot claim that AP are not journalists because they do not investigate and simply repeat what they are told.
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Yes! Yes, we are all journalists!
I'm not.
does this also mean they are gonna go back (Score:3, Interesting)
to being real journalists? are they just trying to protect the nonsense half-ass poorly written claptrap they currently pawn off as news?
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Gawd, that's funny!
An alternate interpretation of their infographic (Score:5, Funny)
I rather like this alternate interpretation of the infographic [imgur.com] the AP used to explain their new scheme. Found via BoingBoing [boingboing.net].
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
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Sorry AP,
In an age when everyone carries an internet-enabled phone with a camera, you just aren't needed.
We're not sure who your replacement will be. But it won't be you.
It sure as hell won't be everyone and their internet-enabled phone.
Ugh. You just made paying for news much more appealing.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Breaking a story and reporting are not the same thing. Obviously, the vast majority of news stories are "broken" by eyewitnesses who are rarely journalists. That's not reporting.
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Little bits? like tweets?
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>>>I got skeptical with the anti-government rant and quit when you cited a fictional sci-fi television show for "evidence".
First-off I didn't cite it as evidence. I never used that word, despite you falsely-quoting it. Second, are you saying a lesson can never be learned from fiction? "A Modest Proposal" about serving children as food, never had any impact on society, or led to welfare programs for the children? AMP may have been fiction but it did make people stop-and-think.
All I was doing
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Re:Your services are no longer needed (Score:4, Interesting)
Yea right after we get the paperless office.
Hey I am all for blogging and the idea of the citizen reporter but they supplement not replace professionals.
Of course at least on TV I don't think the professionals are what they used to be but then I might just being an old fuddy duddy and seeing the past in rose colored glasses.
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You make the assumption that there are any professionals to replace.
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Yea it pretty much sucks but it is still better than most of what you find on the Internet. The problem with the Internet is that most people will find some website that will reinforce their view of the world. They will then think that it is unbiased because for most people they assume anything they don't agree with is unbiased because they are very sure that they are fair and even handed.
Take a look at what gets posted in Slashdot for goodness sake.
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I personally think it comes down to trying to expand their markets and have news coverage 24 hours a day. The fact is there isn't enough news to pad out a whole day and keep people interested.
TV news is the worst but print media still needs to compete with TV so it can be just as bad
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Caveat: I understand the summary is flat wrong, the AP isn't trying to DRM the news, but some points are still interesting and should be explored.
> Hey I am all for blogging and the idea of the citizen reporter but they supplement not replace professionals.
I would normally agree, if not for there being, of late, too many examples of the professionals not being, I dunno, very professional. Citizen reporters may not be an adequate replacement, but I understand the frustration that might lead one to
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I was thinking of Walter Cronkite and Harry Reasoner both of which I feel where true journalists.
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Apostrophe Overload (Score:1)
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Just for you
Unnecessary Quotations [unnecessaryquotes.com]
Enjoy
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Pointless (Score:4, Insightful)
No, Bridis replied. "What I'm talking about, and what has really riled up our internal copyright folks, are the bloggers who take, just paste an entire 800 word story into their blog. They don't even comment on it. And it happens way more than most people realize."
If that happens way more than people realize, then people are unaware of these sites. If people are unaware of these sites, then they don't visit them, in which case they cannot be competition to the AP.
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If that happens way more than people realize, then people are unaware of these sites.
Do you have some magical "spider-sense" which allows you to determine that what you are reading hasn't been copy-pasted from an AP story?
It's almost as if the guy was implying that most people don't have such a super-power...
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Are you telling me supergrrl actually wasn't over in Iraq writing about her personal experience with the latest road side bomb? Damn, you're right. You do need a super-power to realize it!!!
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Are you telling me supergrrl actually wasn't over in Iraq writing about her personal experience with the latest road side bomb? Damn, you're right. You do need a super-power to realize it!!!
See, there's your problem. Supergirl was DC. Everybody knows only Marvel super heroes really exist.
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If that happens way more than people realize, then people are unaware of these sites. If people are unaware of these sites, then they don't visit them, in which case they cannot be competition to the AP.
Not necessarily.
In order for someone to realize that that has happened, they need to both see the story on the blog and see the story attributed to the AP. I don't find it particularly implausible that many or most people reading such a blog might not read the AP directly; I'm not positive I've ever read a story directly from the AP, as opposed to a citation of an AP story by someone else. (A case where their prominence works against them; many people (and more news organizations) cite AP reports in their o
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Further, today plenty of people are going to trust the blog from Random Joe more than they trust the Picayune Times or some other random ad-laden newspaper web site. So if Random Joe is copying and pasting articles from the Chicago Tribune or the LA Times into his blog there are people that will never notice this because they aren't going to the Chicago Tribune, LA Times or even the Picayune Times web site. Ever. Because they are part of the "corporate media conspiracy".
Of course, all of Random Joe's con
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It's the "Times-Picayune", and like most local newspaper sites, it's pretty reliable about local news.
Not again (Score:2, Redundant)
When will money-hungry people get a clue and realise more protection wont save your content from being copied. You dont lose money if your content is copied, as most people will still pay if they feel its worth the price for they want original quality content. Its not like we're stealing a car, because the content is still yours. You cant complain about losing viewers either, as if your content was good enough in the first place, people would stay with you, and your extra protection schemes just make a lot
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First people bitched about newspapers becoming redundant because it's all 'recycled stuff from the AP'. Well, what happens when the AP is gone? I guess we'll be left with talking heads regurgitating the news.
AP is a news gathering service. Sometimes they swindle regular Joe for a free photo/ video/ article, but most AP submitters are freelancers working to gather news full-time. As a former news-gatherer (didn't make enough money to cover my business insurance) - I'll gather stuff for free once my bills and
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When will money-hungry people get a clue and realise more protection wont save your content from being copied. You dont lose money if your content is copied, as most people will still pay if they feel its worth the price for they want original quality content.
Huh? People aren't paying in droves. If something is available for free, it is free as in nobody will ever pay again unless they are uninformed. Uninformed people are keeping the music and movie business going today.
Free will always win out in the end.
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what i mean is, even though you can download mp3s for free, on any kind of decent speakers you can notice the difference with CDs. Even though you can download movies in xvid or divx with ac3, you can notice a difference with DVDs or BR.
Same applies to content, if you're the original publisher, people will come back to you for more of that content, as you will always have it first.
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I do have such audio equipment, differences are especially noticeable in bass and treble, they're much clearer. I also teach guitar here and there and I tend to notice people who listens to CDs usually have a better memory of music and note recognition than those only having mp3 or low quality audio equipments. They're so used to the little distortions and artifacts created by compression that they think it is what music really sounds like.
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A nitpick, but in the time-honoured slashdot tradition, an important one:
The original quote is that 'Information wants [wikipedia.org] to be free. Here's the fuller context:
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Without author's rights, people can't create economies of scarcity.
Exactly, and how many of these forged scarcities do you think exists as of now?
I for myself dont believe in intellectual property, patents, scarcity, or copyrights. I dont care who invented what, as long as it works, and if someone else wants to try and improve the design, i can only be thankful for it.
What I do hope to see before I die is an open society, where money has no value whatsoever, control is delegated without any real power at any level, and where everyone can contribute anywhere and get documen
P-prefaced jargon you say...? (Score:1)
That's a lot of 'p'-prefaced jargon
I can only imagine how it went at AP HQ:
AP CEO: Now, before we adjourn, gentlemen, I have one last matter of utmost importance. I need to protect this precious piece of news from the perils of the interwebs or else our business model from the past will fail - anyone who wants it absolutely, positively _has_ to properly pay per line for it!
Re:P-prefaced jargon you say...? (Score:5, Funny)
Perhaps they're paranoid that the profits of the past will be plundered by pilferous and plagiarizing pirates.
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P-prefaced punchy prose persistently proffers persuasive points, periodically proving ... er, funny.
As a former newspaper IT guy... (Score:4, Interesting)
AP's wire stories used to be delivered using arcane satellite-to-modem-to-serial solutions that functioned pretty faithfully unless you got snow/ice on your satellite dish on the roof.
Then the AP switched to a web-based delivery method which was a hardware improvement, but a Sarbanes-Oxley nightmare along with website/Internet outage issues and other new hijinks that were all new issues that made this web-based solution worse than the arcane solution it replaced.
Now they've gone further down the dark path with DRM.... just sounds like more fun for newspaper IT guys.
Has DRM in any form ever actually worked? (Score:3, Insightful)
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This isn't DRM. It's some html tags that do all of jack and shit.
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It was successful in pissing the hell out of me.
The AP Has No Clue What They're Doing (Score:5, Insightful)
This is so cluelessly ridiculous that I can't decide if it's hilarious or just sad.
Re:The AP Has No Clue What They're Doing (Score:5, Insightful)
That's why it's so important that our access to AP content must continue unrestricted. Where else can be get so many articles by so many writers who have no idea what they're talking about?
With blogs, we generally visit those where we already know the level of "idea what they're talking about" from past reading or reputation. But the AP is an outfit that slaps its trademark across writing of such uneven levels of "idea what they're talking about" that reading them becomes a constantly-entertaining puzzle for each article: "Can you spot everything that's wrong with this picture?"
PNGs and GIFs Anyone? (Score:2)
If it's even worth linking too, people can just convert the stories to images. Let the workaround games begin!
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Or, you could just ignore it, which is what browsers and search engines do anyway with unrecognized markup.
Get this whining to stop. (Score:2, Troll)
Let's just get together and buy AP and fund them, and as their new owners, let the news be free. Like for example BBC is financed, but with all rich countries peoples that have an interest in journalists running around the world finding stuff out and reporting on it.
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So, maybe we aren't all rich, should I just send them a small check every time I read their story? And since they are doing a good job and the only thing I want to change is making the news free, I won't replace any current management. In fact no personnel changes are to be done, we will just give them money and they will be happy giving things to us for free.
Is this what you had in mind?
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"we will just give them money and they will be happy giving things to us for free.
Is this what you had in mind?"
Basically, yes. Rich nations in the west could chip in to keep AP running. No need to sell information for a profit. It would be a little bit of international socialism, I guess.
I don't think this is very feasible, but I think it would be nice.
Why is this tagged "republican" (Score:5, Insightful)
Republicans are farmers, miners and oil drillers and then small business owners at the core. There are plenty of rank and file Republicans who would just as soon let IP laws fall by the wayside because liberals are so concentrated in businesses that benefit from copyright laws.
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Sorry, whatever the whole of their base is, both parties cater to copyright cartels.
Don't tell me that Republicans aren't involved with catering to copyright cartels. Have you heard of the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act? Sonny Bono was a Republican and it was named after him. It passed when there was a Republican majority in both houses. The DMCA was passed when by the same Congress, again, when Republicans ran both houses of Congress. If the Republican party didn't want it, they wouldn't have
Wishful Thinking (Score:5, Informative)
You've got to be kidding. Was that just a gut feeling? Have you ever heard a Republican say anything of the sort?
Maybe you should email members of your delegation and ask. I did, and I can assure you that Republicans from my state are wholly dedicated to "Protecting America's Intellectual Property and Competitiveness(tm)". The ranking member and former chair of the House committee charged with overseeing IP (the Judiciary Committee), Lamar Smith [wikipedia.org], is one of the strongest allies the IP cartels have ever known. Additionally, in his position he's protected the corrupt the Eastern District of Texas.
The IP debate is still far too esoteric for members of either party to be shamed into saying "no" to the cartels.
Oh, and this is interesting: do a whois for 143.231.249.141 and look at this: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lamar_S._Smith&action=history [wikipedia.org]. Self-editing from a House.gov network. Stay classy, Lamar.
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Holy two facedness batman!
"On October 3, 2008, Smith was one of six Texan Republican Congressman to vote for the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 which created the Troubled Assets Relief Program[6].
Despite his support of the bill, he also was a proponent of the 2009 Tea Party protests which condemned any bailouts, and even sent rallies in his district a letter which encouraged them "to protest the massive expansion in the size and scope of government currently underway". [7]"
I bet the fork tongu
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I read your comment as implicitly granting that there is no meaningful partisan divide regarding IP law.
Terms like "minority" and "a lot" are not going to serve us well. The generalizations you made are also not helpful, imho. Nearly all federal legislators support laws like the DMCA. I am also of a "minority" view in the Democratic party.
Regarding your essay, I must say that I find your hostility towards "liberals" disconcerting. I am a small business owner and a "liberal", if you feel you must use that te
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Just as an example: I, and many others, think that employer-based health care has been a disaster for small business; I would much rather pay individual income tax into a government trust fund (which have an excellent track record, in spite of the misinformation) and have a healthy society along with freeing up giant bags of money for other purposes. I really can't see how that would make a liberal anti-small-business. It is time for the Republican party's claim on small business to end. The Chamber doesn't
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I would say that your freeing up of giant bags of money is probably a red herring.
Not really. The benefits would be immediate for a whole class of business. Ask GM. I know that it is heretical to look abroad, but we have decades of data from every other industrialized country. Of course, you need to get the analysis from a source unconnected with the US media (media consolidation is one area where deregulation has objectively been a disaster). National health care comes in varied forms; in Canada, for example, there is a private supplemental insurance industry. It's just that people aren
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Republicans are farmers
LOL,
miners
More LOL
and oil drillers
ROTFL and then
small business owners at the core.
LOLOL ROTFL
wipes tears from eyes
Please stop. I haven't laughed this much since watching American Pie 2 for the first time.
Oh, God. Tell me you meant this as a joke. Please.
I wonder what AP's replacement will look like? (Score:1)
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Yay (Score:1)
Great way to disapear AP. I, for one, Im glad that youve taken this step towards the future where we, the digicrowd, control de shebang.
I actually want something like this -- but for PII (Score:4, Interesting)
I know it sounds nuts, but I actually want a system like this for personally identifiable information (PII).
If a business has my PII in their records, I want them to tag it with meta-data on how it was collected and what rights *they* have to use/share it. It's not any more enforceable than any other DRM scheme, but it would help to implement privacy policies, which is good for the consumer. And it would help to limit secondary uses of PII which is also good for the businesses that make money by collecting PII.
I'm wanting meta-data with terms like "this was collected with NO permission to re-distribute", or "this was collected with a promise to delete after 6 months", etc.
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Holy crap, thats ingeious! its like a EULA for your own work! i want mine to say by reading this content the boss has consented to an anual 30% raise and a binding labor agreement requiring no more than 20 hours of work and permitting no more than 50. nobody reads the EULA.hell... it should also stipulate a week in vegas with the bosses daughter, just for good measure... assuming shes hot.
great. (Score:2, Interesting)
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hopefully they dont send us attack plan R
nice Kubrick reference there... nice indeed.
something like scribd? (Score:2, Interesting)
This is more worrying (Score:3, Insightful)
If content providers get the ability to enforce moronic schemes like this one, many people may find themselves in the receiving end of lawsuits--even some who just followed older fair-use provisions.
AP wants free money "because I'm worth it" (Score:5, Insightful)
AP has asked the Government to examine Google News and other content aggregators, claiming they contribute insufficiently to their income [today.com].
"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 the Government 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 publishers and record companies free money!"
The AP argues that traffic from search engines does not 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 DRM and lawsuits 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."
"a lot of 'p'-prefaced jargon", appropriately (Score:2)
Critical analysis, which would normally fall under "fair use"? P on that!
Note to Self: (Score:2)
Morons. Plain out morons. (Score:2)
you have been leading and dominating all news since last 100 or so years. AND despite being the bearer of the news that heralded huge changes in the course of human history, now, you yourselves are naively, stupidly trying to withstand the change. we are living in a digital era. we are living in an era where citizen journalists report the news.
entrench yourself against this like this, put yourselves in the camp that opposes THE PEOPLE, and you will lose.
Re:fp (Score:4, Interesting)
I'll be pasting this wire service shit into my so-called "journal entries", as per usual. I can always automate OCR off of the screen. So what if hyperlinks aren't preserved? Context and reference can be established by the 1 or 2 blokes who are already actually verifying that stuff.
I'm sure that this won't stop Wired News, Cryptogon.com, Cannon Fire or any of the guys like whatreallyhappened.com - who dump a bit of everything undercovered into the mix. But it will slow them - a bit.
Instead of this crappy pseudo-technology, which has been shown to be ineffective in every other application, AP could profitably syndicate with Google, and share ad revenues. AP==content Google==delivery+revenue engine.
Instead, they want to kill the bloggers - not because of business models. Because they no longer gatekeep the message or manage how it is spun.
Great oligarchs own the megaconglomerates behind corporate news. That's not wild-eyed tinfoil hatted craziness, but simple facts from earnings reports. With incipient dictatorship in everywhere from Western Europe, the US, Iran and Israel, and a coming fiscal "crisis" designed to unify world reserve currency, there's a greater need than ever for these "overlords" - and the banks that loaned them their capital - to turn the Weird Wild Web into your 1984 telescreen.
So, they'll try. Soon, it won't be worth switching on the router - cause you'll be tracked like a migratory bird. In the meantime, we'll all still link and scrape. We'll still point out EXACTLY [globalresearch.ca] what they [blogspot.com] are up to [blogspot.com].
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There is a difference between being out in the cold from a technological perspective and being irrelevant. Professional news gathering is very relevant to me, even if I have to apply my own filters to it. What are the alternatives? Blogging? "Social Media"? Please.
Or are you implying that information about current events itself is no longer relevant? If so, I would say that process started when syndicated sit-com re-runs started competing with network evening news broadcasts, giving people who would r
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AP hasn't been a "professional news gathering service" for a long time. They turned into a bunch of biased 'editorialists' decades ago.
And now they want to restrict access to their drivel? Cya..