Dan posted this in comments yesterday but I was up to my ass in work and then a shrieking migraine so nothing except mocking that wingnut happened last night.Here’s the AP, being really stupid:
is coming, whatever exactly that is. “We’re going to be learning more
ourselves about exactly how the technology is going to work” in about
two weeks, Bridis said.
But about this he is sure. “You can’t just taken an entire AP wire
feed or even an entire AP story, or even half of an AP story,
necessarily, and republish it or repurpose it,” he said. “We need the
money. The industry is falling apart.”
Dan:
You need money. Well, go get some. Raise the rates you’re charging. Make the case to your member papers and to the public that international news is worth paying for. Sack Ron Fournier and Nedra Pickler. Do whatever it is you need to do to make money. But stop acting like suing Google and HuffPo is going to fix this. It isn’t. GO MAKE MONEY.
Let’s be clear about this: A lawsuit, which will doubtless be lengthy because Google don’t play, will enrich no one besides the lawyers arguing it in court. Everybody will look stupid, and those impoverished reporters risking their lives sending dispatches from unholy shitholes around the world, about whom the AP pretends to be so concerned, won’t see a damn dime of any windfall that comes. Because by the time this thing is resolved a few dozen more newspapers will have been murdered, and a few more will figure out that while local journalism is priceless, yes, the Internet is a source for national and international news so why pay through the nose for AP wire copy?
By the way, as someone who saw her leads nearly word-for-word repeated on the wire, hearing the AP canting about stealing and repurposing content is a little rich and a lot hilarious. Doc once famously described them as a “car theft chop-shop without the pesky ethical quandries.” Yet now they want to lecture the Internet. I’d suggest they LURK MOAR.
A.