back to article 'Mad as hell' news agency declares war on light-fingered sites

News agency the Associated Press (AP) has said it will start taking action against internet publishers who use its material without paying for it or without sharing earnings. The company is adopting new, aggressive policies, it said. The company said in a statement that one plan is to track the use of AP material, such as news …

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  1. Dave

    Nominative Determinism

    I do like the name of the AP woman, just the right combination for getting annoyed with the 'bad guys' and setting the lawyers on them.

  2. lIsRT

    Youtube/PRS-style option?

    "News services are unlikely, though, to want to be ignored by the most popular search engine in the world."

    I sense an evil grin appearing on a Google exec's face right now...

  3. Paul
    Thumb Up

    Awesome

    10/10 for AP quoting the 1976 film "Network" - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074958/

  4. EvilGav

    Huh ?

    "Linking to news articles with short excerpts is common practice throughout the web"

    So, because lots of people do it, it's legal ??

    Excellent, i'll fire up Vuze and torrent my little heart out, content in the knowledge that because lots of people are doing it, it's legal.

    Fucking idiot.

  5. Steve

    Is it Sue Google Month

    It must be... Makes a change from Microsoft being sued for a change

  6. Haku

    Who actually "owns" the news anyway?

    I saw an interesting post on Slashdot relating to AP wanting their 'cut' of any revenue generated from news they think they own.

    The post basically said; what if you're a local reporter (possibly unpaid) that posts news to your own website, and AP copies the news from your website and then demands you remove 'their' news or make you pay for it - effectively having your news piece stolen from you and then being told you have no rights to it, just like that poor guy in America who had his artwork stolen and then got a bill from stockart.com for his own creations!

  7. sotar

    Implied Consent?

    According to BT/Phorm (re: Webwise) if you publish something on the Interweb you have given 'implied consent' for others to use it as they wish, including making money out of your hard work.

    Is that NOT the case? Or are BT/Phorm going to purchase a licence from AP?

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    More Aggressive Pursuit of Copyright?

    I almost exclusively use Google News to check out the headlines. If AP took it away from them, I probably wouldn't ever view their website. Does this mean (along with music companies) the commercial world is going to start pursuing copyright more aggressively?

  9. Paul

    "it'll be the case of AP v. Everybody"

    Is Kyle's dad representing everybody ?

  10. bygjohn

    Re: Huh?

    Actually, quoting a short excerpt with proper attribution is fair use, which is why anyone can write, for example, an academic paper without fear of being harassed by copyright pigopolists. Torrenting whole works isn't. Simple, really.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @Haku

    It would be Christopher Morris who is the man what owns the nuuuwze.

  12. EdwardP
    Flame

    This is not a psychotic breakdown; it's a cleansing moment of clarity.

    I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's work, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it.

    We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV's while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be. We know things are bad - worse than bad.

    They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.' Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot - I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you've got to get mad.

    You've got to say, 'I'm a HUMAN BEING, Goddamnit! My life has VALUE!'

    So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell,

    'I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!'

    I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell - 'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Things have got to change. But first, you've gotta get mad!... You've got to say,

  13. Graham Marsden

    @Haku

    "just like that poor guy in America who had his artwork stolen and then got a bill from stockart.com for his own creations!"

    This case might not be as cut and dried as it is being made out to be.

    See the comment from anubis2night at

    http://digg.com/design/Stock_Artwork_Logos_Copyright_and_the_Power_of_Twitter?FC=PRCQ0

  14. Paul

    @ EdwardP

    I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!

    Man that film is awesome.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    Best of luck with the Phormed ISPs AP

    I wish AP well in their struggle to protect their intellectual property. They will need to be patient when they come to talk to BT about their screen scraping Webwise plans. This "wil they/won't they" semi-Phormed ISP have some very novel ideas about Web copyright. If it's out there and published on the internet, BT say that they can use it, copy it and commercially exploit it, according to Value Added Services Director Emma Sanderson, and she considers it unreasonable to expect them to observe copyright notices on websites. So AP, when Webwise-using Phormed ISPs come to scrape your site, so they can make money out of profiling how Webwise users browse it, you will need to tread very carefully. Charge them a lot of money for their unlicensed exploitation of their content won't you? More information on this available at http://www.dephormation.org.uk

    I'm sure Mr Ian (I never knowingly mention Phorm or Webwise) Livingstone will be happy to discuss it.

  16. Christopher Woods
    Paris Hilton

    Typoman strikes again...

    ... But I'll get to that in a minute.

    This is a storm in a teacup, and it'll all blow over pretty soon once the AP's got it out of their system. Nothing's going to change in the long run, they can't stop the millions of blogs' copypasta - I have no qualms about quoting chunks or paragraphs from press releases or news articles if it helps convey the meaning, whilst also linking to the full report on their web site (so my readers can clickthrough to read the full article if they so desire).

    To me, that equates to a friend telling me about some news in summary format, then telling me I can go pick up a copy of the Grauniad to read the full investigation. What's changed? Nothing, except the medium in which this summary information is conveyed.

    AP is smoking something potent if they think they can ever 'win' this 'war'.

    Also, The Drudge Retort [sic]... What's the deal with all the spelling mistakes on El Reg recently? Have your F7 keys broken or something? (Hint: it's in Tools -> Spellcheck if you can't find its menu entry)

    I might go and see if drudgeretort.com is registered or not... maybe I could sell it to some organisation or celebrity which hates Drudge and wants to post responses to some of his articles, and make TENS of pounds. Epic winnings.

    Paris, because even she knows the value of gd splin, grama & pnctuatn when she's a-typing on her free Sidekick

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    "If AP intends to fight this one out, it'll be the case of AP v. Everybody."

    Well it works for the music industry, according to their lawyers.

    HA HA HA

  18. Maty

    er ...

    "The blog, run by Rogers Cadenhead, published six stories using between 33 and 79 words of the AP reports."

    So has your story, since I'll assume 'and', 'but', 'a', 'the' and so on are common to all the stories mentioned. Or do you mean contiguous words, or relevant words, or ... actually as reporters, isn't it your job to explain?

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    The problem with U.S. news...

    In the United States, the problem with the news is that it leans too far politically left, often publishing very incorrect information, instead of being balanced and accurate.

    News outlets which are balanced (Wall Street Journal) continue to have healthy balance sheets.

    News outlets which are right-of-center continue to have healthy balance sheets.

    When the other outlets will quote the story & laugh at their bias - they lose credibility, people stop buying those materials, and people stop reading them (except to read the criticism, since the leftward political bias in those papers is a bigger story than anything that the leftward hacks are publishing.)

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