There's an interesting post on the FireDogLake blog (with appropriate links) that says the Associated Press has begun threatening legal action against blogs that quote too much of their stories. The reason, of course, is copyright. They presumably believe, not without justification, that they pay the salaries and expenses of the people who write the stories they publish, the stories are copyrighted, and they are entitled to exclusive use of those stories.
I'm getting to be an old guy now, so this makes perfect sense to me.
But does it? Jane Hamsher writes:
This is but one of the many conflicts that is going to arise between old a new media, whose rules and customs are dictated by differing economic and technological factors.
The AP will probably be slow to learn the lesson, because it will see no immediate impact if people like me won't link to them any more because we don't want to be sued. I mean in our world, how crazy is that? Like I'm going to sue Atrios for linking to me? That's just insane. We live on traffic, our revenues are based on pageviews. The same can be said for the online outlets that the AP is selling its product to -- newspapers across the country. It's the Washington Post and the Houston Chronicle who will feel it if nobody will link to their AP stories. They are, in effect, buying a product that will not generate traffic they need in order to sell ads to support themselves.
If I were running a major metropolitan daily, and I saw my advertising revenues shrinking and my newsroom personnel diminishing as the dead tree business died, and I knew how important it was to generate online traffic to keep the doors open, I'd be thinking ... Reuters. McClatchy. Bloomberg. Anything but AP.
Why pay for a newswire that's going to sue people for linking to you?
Why indeed? Comments?
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