Associated Press is going to go extinct, due to being incorrigibly idiotic. In the era of blogs, Creative Commons licences, Open Source, Open Access... they are working actively at stopping traffic to their site!!! How much more stupid can they be? And the way they try to bully everyone around about this, I say...let them have it: never, ever link to their stories again - they are stolen stories to begin with, so take a couple of minutes to find the originals that AP stole from, then link to the original. Let the AP die.
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My scientific specialty is chronobiology (circadian rhythms and photoperiodism), with additional interests in comparative physiology, animal behavior and evolution. I am not an MD so I cannot diagnose and treat your sleep problems. As well as writing this blog, I am also the Online Discussion Expert for PLoS. This is a personal blog and opinions within it in no way reflect the policies of PLoS. You can contact me at: Coturnix@gmail.com
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« ClockQuotes | Main | Darwin Ceiling at the Museum »
AP: Stupid, it hurts!
Category: Media
Posted on: June 14, 2008 12:33 PM, by Coturnix
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Comments
Heh. I've read other stories about this, but yours is the most concise.
Posted by: Matt Platte | June 14, 2008 3:00 PM
See also this. My response to that:
Reaction equals action
or
Reap what you've sown
or
Get a taste of your own medicine
or
Start walking the walk and we'll reconsider.
Posted by: Coturnix | June 14, 2008 3:26 PM
What do you mean, "they are stolen stories to begin with"?
AP has actual reporters. They do original reporting.
Posted by: Michael Burton | June 14, 2008 4:02 PM
Check the links above - they steal from actual journalists and repackage as if they did the reporting themselves. Always did it. They are more like an old-school version of one of those leech blogs that steal blog-posts from others while removing links, URLs, names of blogs, names of bloggers, then get ad revenue from people hitting their site through searches.
Posted by: Coturnix | June 14, 2008 4:06 PM
I really doubt that they are "stealing." They have legal agreements with the other news organizations for sharing the stories amongst themselves. There are probably even payments made for stories that come from local news sources, and local newspapers pay a fee to be able to use the AP stories.
Posted by: Ahcuah | June 14, 2008 6:26 PM
Depends on the type of "morality world" one is in, as Jeff Jarvis mentions in his post. From their perspective, it is all 'legal'. From ours, their laws are illegal, or should be, or at least are painfully outdated.
Posted by: Coturnix | June 14, 2008 6:55 PM
Odd sort of "morality world" you live in in which valid contracts are "illegal". (Basically, the contracts are an early version of a Creative Commons license among members of the media.)
Note carefully that I am not defending their going after folks who are clearly making "fair use" of the AP stories, just that to call such contracts "stealing" is a perversion of the language.
Interestingly, I went to high school with Jeff Jarvis.
Posted by: Ahcuah | June 14, 2008 9:38 PM
Calling the AP's normal collection and retransmission of stories "stealing" is a bizarre use of the word. The process is, as has been pointed out, a well-recognized part of the contract that member newspapers sign on to. You may not like that model of journalism, but it's hardly "stealing." Second, retransmitted stories typically retain the attribution -- for example, one page of the Sunday edition of the paper I work for will contain a story with a byline "so-and-so from the Sierra Vista Herald," and another with a byline "so-and-so from the Arizona Daily Star" -- both accessed through the AP. Third, the AP employs a large number of its own reporters -- so in those cases, there is no "original" to find, because it was the AP's story to begin with. That being said, the suits against Drudge et al sound like they're off their rocker.
Posted by: Stentor | June 15, 2008 12:39 AM
This is faintly reminiscent of TSR's early policy vis a vis the internet. Basically, if you published your home brewed D&D stuff online and used any TSR trademark (e.g., umber hulk) you were at risk of being sued, or more likely booted off your ISP after they received a "bigfoot letter" from TSR's lawyers.
TSR as an independent company didn't long survive the net with that policy.
Posted by: karl | July 9, 2008 3:38 PM