Short-Sighted AP Idiots Don't Know Copyright, Or the Web
It wasn't too long ago that I asked the question, Is AP Run By Idiots? But a new post by my BNET Media colleague David Weir about AP's scheduled usage rate has got me rethinking how I phrased the question. I'm torn between whether it's no longer necessary to ask, as an affirmative answer is so aggressively promoted by AP itself, or if I should have instead asked the color the organization is using for its corporate clown suit uniform.
After a number of people on the web reacted so strongly to the AP announcement of its "wrapper" to track use of its news items, the Associated Pinheads sent people out to do full-bore damage control. Mind you, for most bloggers that meant offering links to documents that reiterated its points. Someone did go so far as to physically speak to someone from the Columbia Journalism Review, and writer Ryan Chittum has become something of an APologist, saying that much of the concern was "overheated" and that the AP was clearly not that "stupid" and was only interested in "sites that systematically use its content to draw traffic and sell ads against it." He then went on in another post last week, talking about his refuting some of the nonsense and quoting a follow-up email from Jane Seagrave, AP senior vice-president for global product development. Here's some of what she said:
I thought (you) did a great job of synthesizing our conversation and quoted me accurately. I don't see any inconsistency. We do believe all our content has value, and the focus of our efforts is on the bad actors who systematically misappropriate it without permission and make money off it without payment. We have no intention of sending out the troops to stamp out individual use of our content.Ah, for the subtlety of language. The organization is going to focus its collection efforts on the low-hanging litigation fruit. But notice she's not saying that individuals have the fair use right to quote articles. That's because AP doesn't that everyone should be paying to even quote a handful of words from an AP article, as looking at the price lists for using content shows:
For-Profit Use
Educational or Non-Profit Use
Yup, AP thinks that if someone quotes as few as five words of an article or headline, even for educational use, the person should pay. Oh, but wait, it doesn't stop there. There's the menu choice for "legal prints you make on your home or office printer -- or that we make and deliver to you." To order prints from AP, you need to request at least 100 copies of a given article. Does AP think that you can print a copy or two on your local printer? Who knows? It doesn't bother to say.AP can talk all it wants, but actions speak louder than words. What its activities say is that the organization doesn't understand the web and, frankly, doesn't seem to understand copyright and the legal concept of fair use. Either that, or it doesn't care. Not that we'll ever learn, because according to a report by Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land, AP has said that it's "done" talking to anyone about copyright, fair use, and its intended practices.
Mind you, I'm not someone who buys into the whole "information wants to be free" ethos. I make a living off my intellectual property of writing and have a lot of sympathy for print publications, where much of my work appears. However, you can't run a business on how you wish the world operated. Instead, you must find a model that operates within reality. And that's why the AP, and other media companies that long for the good old days, are doomed. Refusing to recognize that changes in technology are completely overturning the creation, publication, and distribution of information, they insist that everyone else adapt to accommodate them. And you'd have to be an idiot to think that would happen.
Image via stock.xchng user Mr_Basmt, site standard license.