Apr
9
The Ongoing Battle with the AP Over Online Content
Note: This article doesn’t have much to do with software, but issues like this have generated a lot of discussion lately and could ultimately affect blogs like this one. Most people, myself included, firmly believe that the internet should be a place to freely exchange ideas and news, as long as credit is given in the form of links to the source.
The Associated Press (AP) news organization has once again shown that it doesn’t understand the world of online news distribution. According to TechCrunch, an AP executive ordered one of it affiliates, country radio station WTNQ-FM in Tennessee, to remove all AP videos from its website. The problem is, all of the videos were embedded directly from the AP’s YouTube channel. YouTube channels like this one have embed codes on all videos that are designed specifically for spreading that video around the web. That’s why people post videos to YouTube! Not to mention the fact that this radio station is a paying AP affiliate!
I could embed all of the AP’s YouTube videos in this blog without fear of violating any type of usage rights. The videos are on YouTube specifically for that reason. However, this particular AP executive that is trying to “police” the web didn’t know they had a public YouTube channel! After attempting to reason with the AP executive, an employee of the radio station, Frank Stovel, was ordered by the AP to remove all AP videos from its website.
A local video producer named Christian Grantham interviewed Frank Strovel after this incident to get the full story.
Since the time when this story first ran on TechCrunch, the AP has tried to cover its tracks and has allowed the Tennessee radio station to once again post the videos. However, many questions are still unanswered and the AP still seems to not know how YouTube works.
I know the AP has been around for a long time and it has battled with declining revenues in this era of digital media. They are simply trying to generate money from online news sources that use their content. The past 6 months have been especially tough on traditional news media, and many newspapers have been forced to close. However, the AP has proven time and again that they don’t have a clear strategy for implementing a new business model.
Blunders like the one yesterday are costing them dearly in the form of bad press all over the internet. This entire situation is very similar to what the music industry went through when mp3 players started replacing traditional media like CD’s. At first the music industry got everything wrong and lost lots of revenue. Many companies eventually got it right by embracing new technologies and they seem to be doing well. The news industry needs to go through the same transformations as the music industry, but giants like the AP are standing in the way of progress.
This is a heated debate that will go on well into the foreseeable future. New media giants like Google are clashing head on with the AP, and it will be only a matter of time before Google prevails and works out a compromise in their favor. Or, Google could simply buy a few news gathering resources of their own and stop using the AP all together.
For further reading on this battle with the AP, check out the following links:
AP Seeks to Rein in Sites Using Its Content – The New York Times
Behind The A.P.’s Plan To Become The Web’s News Cop – TechCrunch
Google Answers Questions about the AP – Google Public Policy Blog
Wall Street Journal, AP take aim at Google – CNet News
