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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."
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Inside the AP's Plan To Security-Wrap Its News Content

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  • by devleopard ( 317515 ) on Wednesday July 29, 2009 @04:10PM (#28873569) Homepage

    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.

    • by Freetardo Jones ( 1574733 ) on Wednesday July 29, 2009 @04:11PM (#28873597)

      You actually expect either the submitter or the editor to read the article instead of just mischaracterizing the story by just making shit up?

      • Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)

        by Eevee ( 535658 )
        No, but I do expect someone complaining about the submitter or editor making shit up to actually have read the story--since what was posted on Slashdot was taken directly from the story.
        • 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.

    • Re: (Score:1, Redundant)

      by dltaylor ( 7510 )

      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"?

      • Did you even bother to read the Ars Technica article to see what the GP was talking about?

      • by spun ( 1352 ) <loverevolutionary&yahoo,com> on Wednesday July 29, 2009 @04:30PM (#28873937) Journal

        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)

          by ThrowAwaySociety ( 1351793 ) on Wednesday July 29, 2009 @06:17PM (#28875307)

          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)

            by Bat Country ( 829565 ) on Wednesday July 29, 2009 @07:28PM (#28876003) Homepage
            You have perhaps not considered the possibility that the plan is actually to lobby for the new DMCA exemption guidelines for this year to include language which prohibits people from circumventing their new protection. They could ask for this under the grounds that it's necessary to protect the cultural "treasure" that is the national press.
          • Re:Robot Scrapers (Score:5, Insightful)

            by grcumb ( 781340 ) on Wednesday July 29, 2009 @07:39PM (#28876065) Homepage Journal

            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

            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.

      • 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.)

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          Yeah,

          God forbid they make money of something they produced.
          • by Draek ( 916851 )

            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.

    • As a builder of RSS processing technology, I'm really happy they like RSS snippets. As for the wrapper, I can only hope it contains some proper semantic tagging, for useful stuff, like the location of the event, the subject of the item. etc.

      ---

      Internet Business [feeddistiller.com] Feed @ Feed Distiller [feeddistiller.com]

  • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29, 2009 @04:11PM (#28873601)

    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.

  • by wardk ( 3037 ) on Wednesday July 29, 2009 @04:11PM (#28873607) Journal

    to being real journalists? are they just trying to protect the nonsense half-ass poorly written claptrap they currently pawn off as news?

  • by ReverendLoki ( 663861 ) on Wednesday July 29, 2009 @04:14PM (#28873647)

    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)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday July 29, 2009 @04:14PM (#28873653)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • 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)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday July 29, 2009 @04:41PM (#28874091)
        Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • 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.

          • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • by LWATCDR ( 28044 ) on Wednesday July 29, 2009 @04:26PM (#28873875) Homepage Journal

      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.

      • You make the assumption that there are any professionals to replace.

      • Professionals? Clearly you've not paid attention to the news industry. Yellow Journalism is a requirement now.
        • by LWATCDR ( 28044 )

          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.

      • 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

    • ..so you mean that we should all start crusing YouTube for our news content?
  • Just in case anyone's not interested, that post contains '18' single quotes, possibly a new record. I keep envisioning an imaginary hand lifting to do the quotes gesture everytime I see one of those, and TFP disturbed me quite a lot. I feel that a lot of it could have been said without the excessive single quotes around every other word, especially when it came to p-prefaced, which could have been written as-is. Thank you.
  • Pointless (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Hatta ( 162192 ) * on Wednesday July 29, 2009 @04:20PM (#28873767) Journal

    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.

    • 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...

      • 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!!!

        • 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.

    • Bridis just described exactly how the network news channels work too! Only in the case of CNN and Fox News they have ass-kicking graphics with Dolby 5.1.
    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      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

      • by cdrguru ( 88047 )

        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

  • Not again (Score:2, Redundant)

    by jerep ( 794296 )

    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

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      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

    • by cdrguru ( 88047 )

      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.

      • by jerep ( 794296 )

        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.

    • by grcumb ( 781340 )

      Information is meant to be free, if you think money is incentive for creating it, then what about the entire open source community and millions of free webpages?

      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:

      On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, bec

      • by jerep ( 794296 )

        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

  • 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!

  • by Vandil X ( 636030 ) on Wednesday July 29, 2009 @04:30PM (#28873927)
    ...I find this move interesting and sad.

    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.
  • by electricprof ( 1410233 ) on Wednesday July 29, 2009 @04:35PM (#28874015)
    I recall the early days of development, sales and distribution for PC software. A bunch of different anti-piracy methods were pursued, we all heard about the enormous amounts of money being lost to piracy, etc. In the end all these approaches really did was piss off the legitimate users and make the software less attractive. It's not exactly clear to me if the software industry really has any effective DRM system now, although they seem to have some things that look they are trying to protect themselves. I suspect the media industry will go through a similar evolution ... kicking, screaming and whining all the way.
    • This isn't DRM. It's some html tags that do all of jack and shit.

      • I agree. I do realize that this isn't DRM, but it's also clear that the media providers, music, video, news, etc. are trying to find some kind of DRM solution. My musing is mainly about whether the history of the software industry shows us that DRM and it's variations simply don't work.
    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by jerep ( 794296 )

      It was successful in pissing the hell out of me.

  • by vertigoCiel ( 1070374 ) on Wednesday July 29, 2009 @04:40PM (#28874079)
    So, if you can't be bothered to RTFA, the AP obviously has no idea what they're talking about. Some snake oil salesman came along and told them that Microformats are magic digital beans that will protect their content with some sort of "tracking beacon" that will phone home and prevent infringement.

    This is so cluelessly ridiculous that I can't decide if it's hilarious or just sad.
    • by wytcld ( 179112 ) on Wednesday July 29, 2009 @04:58PM (#28874347) Homepage

      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?"

  • If it's even worth linking too, people can just convert the stories to images. Let the workaround games begin!

    • by Fastolfe ( 1470 )

      Or, you could just ignore it, which is what browsers and search engines do anyway with unrecognized markup.

  • 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.

    • 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?

      • by migla ( 1099771 )

        "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.

  • by tjstork ( 137384 ) <todd.bandrowskyNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Wednesday July 29, 2009 @04:54PM (#28874281) Homepage Journal

    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.

    • 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)

      by daemonburrito ( 1026186 ) on Wednesday July 29, 2009 @06:38PM (#28875511) Journal

      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.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by twostix ( 1277166 )

        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

    • 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.

  • Will it be everyone everywhere reporting everything they see all the time? That would give an interesting bent to coverage.
  • 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.

  • by schwaang ( 667808 ) on Wednesday July 29, 2009 @05:06PM (#28874477)

    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.

    • 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)

    by Nerrd ( 1094283 )
    Now we'll only be able to read the news through a DRM-114 Confabulator.
  • It's going to be at least as annoying as scribd, isn't it? Some sort of annoying flash thing that keeps people from copying text? Maybe the efforts of those captcha hackers can be redirected.
  • by Obispus ( 803786 ) on Wednesday July 29, 2009 @05:31PM (#28874781)
    From the Ars Technica article:

    Down the road, of course, the AP might go to Congress and ask that whatever tracking and rights system it settles on be given the force of law. It's not as crazy as it sounds; European publishers already hope to get a law enforcing the Automated Content Access Protocol.

    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 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."

  • By repeating their string of P-terms, they can spit in the face of their would-be readers.

    Critical analysis, which would normally fall under "fair use"? P on that!
  • Add www.ap.org and hosted.ap.org to hosts file.
  • 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.

White dwarf seeks red giant for binary relationship.

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