AP and 28 News Groups To Collect Fees From Aggregators 303
jjp9999 writes "The Associated Press is launching the NewsRight project to make aggregators pay for content. Some of the top names in the news industry are currently on board, including New York Times Co. and Washington Post Co, and they're currently negotiating with Gannett, Tribune, Cox and News Corp. The project will license original news from the media companies and collect royalties from aggregators. The use of lawsuits and threats of lawsuits are already on the agenda. NewsRight's first salesperson starts work this week."
Re:Here's how the first call will go down.... (Score:5, Informative)
a few months later: Belgian Newspapers 'Give Permission' To Google To Return Them To Search Results [techdirt.com]
Re:First post (Score:5, Informative)
Don't forget this bit:
They worked with Cisco/Linksys for five years prior to the suit. Cisco had ample time and help to comply with the GPL before the FSF filed suit. They then settled when Cisco finally decided to step up and be compliant, I don't believe the FSF sought damages or financial compensation.
So again, how are these similar?
Re:Isn't sharing the news the whole point of the A (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, it is, but the "traditional media" pay AP for that privilege and the argument is that so should the "new media" that publish these articles.
Re:First post (Score:5, Informative)
It's covered by the RICO act (and other laws), and is known as extortion. It's basically summarized as, "I threaten to take legal action against you, if you don't pay me money."
They know perfectly well that Mr. Blogger, who may make hundreds a year, can't possibly defend himself against a single corporation who makes millions, or a group of corporations who make billions.
It's not even just the individual. They could take down Slashdot, as portions of the article are reused here. That *is* allowed by copyright law as fair use.
What these publishers are going to find out is, if they kill off the bloggers who are partially republishing their stories and providing links, the traffic to the original publication is going to drop. I won't say it would be huge. That all depends on the publication. How many people read the NY Times directly, and how many catch an interesting story on Slashdot and follow the link to the NY Times?
I strongly suspect that the average Mr. Blogger is not the target. They want the big fish with big money. Google News, Yahoo News, and other multi-million hit/day sites. I don't know, but I suspect, that they are already paying their tribute to the news corps for at least some of their feeds. This will severely impact mid-level news sites, who get tens of thousands of hits/day. They may make a few bucks at it from advertising, but that's a long way from being able to pay for feeds from AP, Reuters, UPI, etc. More often than not, the advertising revenue barely pays for their hosting.
As it's clear that they are litigious bastards, they will work their way down the ranks, until they're filing 100k "John Doe" lawsuits every week. It could very easily get to the point where if you posted more than a few words that could have been in another story, you owe or get shut down.
But, the litigious bastards will always win. Why? Because they have the money. They already own a decent portion of our political system, they can and will have laws changed in their favor. This has been proven time and time again. At very least, the litigious bastards can afford to keep it in court longer than you can.
LMFTFY (Score:4, Informative)
That would be barratry, not barristry.
Barratry is the practice of filing frivolous and baseless lawsuits in an attempt to harass and extort.
Barristry is something quite different.
Re:SOPA (Score:5, Informative)
SOPA is about the takedown of servers that house illegal content.. and the overreach is that they'll take out a whole service to punish for one piece of offending content. This is about the AP stepping up and selling a bundle of content suppliers for one price, essentially making a legal store so there's a right way to do it.
Re:First post (Score:3, Informative)
It is.
And it's why Righthaven is bankrupt now.
1. In order to sue, you must have standing. Righthaven did not have this, because in the US, at least, you /must/ own the copyrights in order to sue. Unless the AP and others are going to sign all their content over to this new organization, I doubt they will have standing because it is unlikely that the AP and others will willy-nilly sign over copyright on a bet.
2. In order to not be tossed out of court on your ear for barratry, your case must be prima facie valid. Righthaven did not even have this because of fair use. This new company is going to run afoul of the same fair use problems.
Unless copyright law is changed to allow third parties to sue, like in Germany, this is unlikely to change.
--
BMO
Re:RSS as Fair Use (Score:5, Informative)
Every leader kills citizens of different countries in war (I'm not justifying war, or the killing of anyone, but rather stating a fact), it is only dictators who kill their own citizens under the pretense of "war". And my post was drawing attention to this point, not saying that non US citizens had no rights.
Re:I think this is absolutely necessary (Score:3, Informative)
And how do you know they don't have a license to put that up???
To be honest I don't. I would be surprised, though, if the various news agencies they use all gave yahoo carte blanche to display their work in such an outlandish way. I also haven't seen yahoo claim anywhere that they already pay news agencies for their work. So, I can't prove that they do or don't, but it doesn't seem likely that yahoo are compensating sources.
Oh come on, don't be surprised, it took 2 minutes of googling.
Yahoo Renews Deal to Use A.P. Material [nytimes.com]
Re:RSS as Fair Use (Score:5, Informative)
The way it works is (very roughly): 1) news agencies have people on the ground taking pictures and writing the facts. 2) The news agencies sell the facts to newspapers and TV. 3) The aggregators republish the news from the online versions of newspapers.
Cut out 3), and 1) + 2) is the same as it's always been, even before the internet existed. Even if you cut out 2), say if Murdoch goes belly up, then 1) can still sell the facts to 3), which is what TFA is about.
Re:How a bout we try a little tenderness? (Score:4, Informative)
Don't ask me how you explain to them that medicare is socialism.
Sorry, but this is just a Fox News lie. Every capitalist society in the world, including all of Europe and Asia has some form of medicare program. A medical insurance program provided by the government but provisioned by private medical providers otherwise known as medicare has nothing in common with:
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production.
Re:First post (Score:5, Informative)