AP orders affiliate to pull embedded YouTube vids The Associated Press is evidently as good as its word when it comes to enforcing a clampdown on unauthorised use of its material - so much so that it recently ordered an affiliate radio station to remove embedded videos taken from its official YouTube channel. According to Cnet, WTNQ-FM in Tennessee got a bit of a surprise …
I think the easiest solution here, is for the press sites to boycott AP. If press sites stops buying from AP altogether (until they fix their attitude), this will solve itself. Either AP will get some healthy competition, or AP will fix their attitude. Either way, the users win.
//Svein
To be "fair" to them, they probably have their heads so far up their asses that it's not surprising that the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. The 'legal' department probably truly didn't know that there was a YouTube channel. Just some gung-ho assholes looking for something to do while they collect their hefty retainers.
This used to be practised by parking sharks. They buy a bit of unfenced land, put up a sign saying "parking prohibited, fine £200" and then deliberately park a lorry in front of the sign so it can't be seen. Then clamp everybody who parks alongside it until they cough up the release fee.
Sounds like AP is doing exactly the same with its videos -- entrapping people into making use of them, then trying to charge them for it.
Except that because there's no clamping mechanism, the only way to get any money from it would be court action -- and sensible courts are likely to take a dim view of companies that use entrapment as a business model.
Take two steps back... no.. one forward... no I was right take two steps back...
Ok, now that you're relaxed and are not hyperventilating, take a look at the larger picture.
AP and Google are in a battle over Google's aggregation of AP's news stories.
This is just another part of the battle.
Seems Google has gotten to big for their britches and someone needs to bitch slap them.
I thought it meant that AP had gotten too big for their britches and that Google needed to pull all AP sourced content from You Tube. Or, every website that has the AP sourced embed links needs to remove them, if Google doesn't do the job in a hurry. Or, how about, Google replace all AP sourced You Tube videos with a simple announcement screen shot that says 'AP are behaving like a pack of idiots, so we've blocked them because we don't want any trouble'.
The quality of AP "reporting" has fallen off of a cliff lately any way. The AP doesn't even want other sites to hyperlink to their stories. How stupid is that? Apparently the AP doesn't seem to know how this new-fangled Internet thing works.
Now that American newspapers are becoming extinct left and right the AP has decided that their business model for the 21 century will be patterned after SCO's model of "sue everybody". Good luck with that, because it worked out so well for SCO.
Ironically enough, the AP has *become the story* which is something of a no no in the field of what used to be known as "journalism".
The AP isn't adapting to the new environment. Ok, class, who can tell me what happens to dinosaurs that don't adapt to their environment?
1. keepvid.com
or, if that's not working:
2. clipnabber.com
Copy the URL, paste it in, download the resulting link to an mpeg4 file, et voila! Sic semper AP.
Besides, when you think about it, YouTube rather goes against one of the main advantages of the Internet: the idea of decentralized content; it's pulled from one site, but a buttload of "mirrors" of the content spring up elsewhere. I know I'm not the only one who remembers that old-school concept. Thank Dog for good old Web 1.0.
Pricks.
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