Is AP Run By Idiots?

It's hard to come up with a plausible alternative to the "idiot" theory.

I suppose that, given that the only way the AP is likely to survive is by government fiat, this could be a perverse form of lobbying. It's a publicity stunt.

Step A: Try to demonstrate that all the headlines on the web were originally written by you.

Step B: Argue that this makes your organization indispensable -- when you go out of business, trains and buses will stop running, the sun will stand still in the sky, cancer will never be cured.

Step C: To draw attention to your argument: Scream, shout, jump on chairs, sue everyone in sight. When none of this works: Decry the lawlessness of society, demand protection.

Step D: ???

Step E: Government action!

The smartest members of the music industry (but not, alas, the influential ones) have said for years that the realistic way forward is a blanket licensing scheme: Each of us gets the right to download and play whatever we want, and in return we're legally obligated to pay an annual fee to some ASCAP-like organization that divides the money up among music publishers. Now, I like this idea, but the obvious downside is: Who is a music publisher, and how do we figure out how to divide the money? You've got to come up with some kind of ground rules. There's going to be a lot of people working the refs. Perhaps the AP has concluded that such a scheme is their only hope and is trying to make sure they're positioned to argue that the ground rules should favor them.

Or, you know, there's the idiot theory. Still might be the best one, really. Occam's Razor and all that.

The thing which really makes AP sound like a mental patient is all this raving about the "wrapper" technology that will magically track down uses of their content on the web. But I'm not necessarily convinced they they really believe in the Easter Bunny, phlogiston, or digital watermarks for plain text. Perhaps this talk about magical "wrappers" is just a face-saving attempt to say "we will find you if you quote our material" without having to say "...and we will use Google to do it, of course, just like everyone else does. Of course, our publicly-stated belief is that Google is an unethical leech and that they should be paying us money every time they return a search containing some of our writing. But of course we won't be paying anyone else for the writing that we find using Google, because we're special and besides we don't have any money."

Actually, that explanation still sounds like the raving of a mental patient. It all keeps coming back to the idiot theory.

“If someone can build multibillion-dollar businesses out of keywords, we can build multihundred-million businesses out of headlines.”

Wow, what a truly epic misunderstanding of what search engines do.

The thinking goes: Google is just a business built out of keywords. They come up with the best keywords, and we fork over cash to them for that. AP has got some slick headlines which are even better than keywords, because they have more words. Also, we produce them, not steal them from other people like Google, which must be an even better business!

I also have to say, the whole rights-managed link framework sounds like the biggest pie-in-the-sky project I've ever heard. Some consultant really sold them on something that is going to be quite lucrative (for the consultant obviously).

It's a move of desperation. Papers sign multi-year, mutli-thousand (or hundred thousand, depending on the paper's size) contracts to use AP content, and many of them have been considering canceling their contracts to save money.

http://www.newspaperdeathwatch.com/star-tribune-ditches-ap-o...

The AP has to do something or will find itself completely irrelevant. While they produce graphics and quite a bit of the foreign news published in this country, most domestic stories come from their member papers. Fewer member papers = less value for members = death spiral for AP.

They have to do something to add value for their member papers. Leading the charge to an industry-wide pay wall actually makes some sense, as they are in the unique position to unify the 1,400 papers that belong to the organization.

That's not to say it will work. Technologically, it seems retarded on its face. Economically, I have no idea how they'll enforce it. But suing users has kept the music industry in business - for now at least - so who knows, maybe suing aggregators and bloggers will keep the AP in business.

RIAA - Meet the Associated Press.

The author concluded: "I think it would make sense for bloggers right now to start posting AP headlines and links along with a small amount of discussion on each, to keep it all within fair use, after all."

However, why not simply avoid AP? If they want to be outside the interlinked web, just let them go there. Don't link to them. Consequently, the search engines also shouldn't link to them. If they want to be in an empty room - just leave them there.

It won't take long and they'll beg to become noticed. In a few years, maybe they'll turn the corner, maybe they'll sink into insignificance. Who cares?

The microformat the AP are talking about is described in a little more detail on the AP Labs Wiki:

http://labs.ap.org/wiki/hNews

When I see moves like this, I think about a wonderful small, white, fluffy dog my girlfriend had. After a while, I sort of co-adopted him as my dog, and I'd walk him to a big fenced schoolyard every night before bed so he could do his business.

Now, I could run around with him and have a nice time and play and exercise. But if I let him off his leash, it'd be HELL trying to get him back on. He'd go pat-pat-pat-VROOOOOMMMMMMMM past me when I'd try to grab him. It'd take like forever.

So it is industries like newspapers. The dog is off the leash. Pandora's Box is opened. Horses are escaped from barn. The time to try something like this was a long time ago, proactively, with lots of value-add.

Trying to force people to pay for something they've been getting free, with no new add-value, and new restrictions and inconveniences, when there's alternative sources... well, it ain't gonna work. Pat-pat-pat-VROOOOMMM. "Dog! Come back here. RIGHT NOW! I mean it! I mean it! Come back! ... Seriously! It's cold, I'm sick of being out here! ... Right now! ... I mean it!"

To quote John Gruber,

They have no idea what they’re talking about. Seriously, look at this gibberish [http://www.ap.org/media/images/APnewsregistry.jpg]. Someone just sold the Associated Press a bag of magic beans.

Wouldn't this imply news aggregators like HN would have to pay to post links?

There's a pretty good story to be told here, combined with the Death of Popular Music and the RIAA.

In both cases, it looks like people stopped taking any risks. The music industry (at least the Popular Music Industry) started putting out more and more formulaic garbage, b/c it was low risk. The AP stopped doing journalism and moved to a press-release transcription agency. Eventually both started dying. They started looking around for external causes, and found The Internet.

Now they're trying to undo the effects of internet in hopes that they'll return to where they were before. Of course, what they have to do is realize that where they were before was due to their risk-taking predecessors' legacies, and where they are now are the results of their own cowardly actions.

What they should do is fire themselves and admit that they're cowardly losers.

I guess I'm going to go a little bit activist here, but this story makes me think that strategically, now is a good time for people who believe more things should be in the public domain. As media companies and publishers do what they can to hang on to the last grasps of industries which are passing them by, they may start to do things which seem pretty ridiculous, as is seen here. Out of this ridculousness may come a little bit more open-mindedness on the part of the general public toward content belonging in the public domain.

This is an excellent opportunity for someone to create a start up around. The AP is basically just a news aggregation service and a monopoly. How many organizations just get their news off of the AP and don't actually sponsor any of their own.

A small company could have liberal reuse policies and use the APs lack of foresight against them. Pay contributors for their content based on its popularity.

"hNews can be thought of as inheriting from hAtom, since parsers and tools that do not understand the hNews extensions can still parse the hAtom content."

So in other words if you dont use their parser then you wont get any of their restrictions. Are they going to FORCE us to use the parser they decide?

So you AP and this guy together: http://gawker.com/5305503/lets-screw-up-the-entire-internet-...

and what do you get?

That so many people are calling them idiots means they may be on to something.

Does anyone actually understand how this microformat & "tracking beacon" are supposed to work? Is it an image bug in the source?

Can news (information) be monopolised?

Yes

"I make my living as a writer, editor, and photographer, and realize that everyone creating content needs an income. "

LOL. Hence, the entire legal system needs to be horrifically twisted to meet these people's 'needs'.