Markets

Why Does the AP Chase Phantom Enemies?

By David Weir

Updated on: October 10, 2009 / 1:01 AM EDT / MoneyWatch

The AP's CEO Tom Curley has made another provocative speech, this time at the World Media Summit in Beijing.

Many parts of the speech were well-informed and insightful, particularly about the way the media world is changing and how fundamental those changes are, but Curley also continues to denounce the "free-riders and pirates" who allegedly are the AP's greatest enemies.

Forgive my skepticism, but I have yet to ever hear any actual names, let alone learn the web addresses, of these alleged scofflaws.

In order to gain credibility with those of us who cover the media industry, and therefore probably scan more websites, blogs and content aggregator sites than does Mr. Curley, he is going to have to start naming names.

Until then, the other comments he made in Beijing, excerpted below, have to be considered empty threats against phantom enemies, or possibly missiles directed at a very big company, as discussed below:

"We are only going to work with those who use our principles. We are not going to work with everybody. So if you don't agree to our protocols, if you don't agree to give us real-time metrics, we aren't going to work with you. ...
"Free-riders and pirates are claiming they're entitled to our property."
"From all visible signs, (the Internet) not a place where a news organization can survive by just doing business as usual, creating and marketing content."
"(I)t often appears as if the more our content is distributed, the more our pricing declines."
"(W)e content creators have been too slow to react to free exploitation of news content by third parties without input or permission."
"Random distribution of traffic by aggregators such as search engines directs audience and revenue away from those who invest in original news reports but assures the aggregators and their ad networks of a stream of revenue based on aggregation and indexing of published news content."
"To turn the tide, AP is creating a News Registry â€" a rights management and tracking system."
"We call this effort AP3P or Protect, Point and Pay. Step one is to protect published news content against unauthorized exploitation."
"Step two is to aggregate and index published news content so that aggregators can better point their users to the published content."
"Step three is to enable new content licensing models for use of the published content with support for payment models that individual publishers may adopt."
"Going forward, AP will license only those who agree to the principles of Protect, Point and Pay."
"We will no longer tolerate the disconnect between the people who devote themselves â€" at great human and economic cost â€" to gathering the news of public interest and those who profit from it without supporting it."

I've tried to reprint enough of Curley's argument so you can follow his logic. And that logic is persuasive if you acept his underlying premise that someone is stealing the AP's content. Many bloggers, meanwhile, are speculating that Curley's true target is Google, and the above remarks contain several references that support that analysis.

But if Curley is is prepared to stand up and call Google a "free-rider" or a "pirate," he's going to have to explain away the lucrative contracts he has negotiated with the search giant to license its content, as well as the huge role Google plays to drive traffic to the AP and its member sites.

Baseless rhetoric is no substitute for data. Pejorative labels do not persuade those of us who need real names, real urls, real evidence.