The AP Is Right to Rein In Aggregators

By Tom Dunlap

The Associated Press is right. It's about time they woke up.

On Monday, the venerable news organization decided to finally get tough on Google, Yahoo, and others who "aggregate" AP's content, then make money off those links by putting ads on pages that show those links. AP is also going after the sites that outright steal AP stories.

The New York Times filed this report on the story:

Taking aim at the way news is spread across the Internet, The Associated Press said on Monday that Web sites that used the work of news organizations must obtain permission and share revenue with them, and that it would take legal action against those that did not.

AP executives said they were concerned about a variety of news forums around the Web, including major search engines like Google and Yahoo and aggregators like the Drudge Report that link to news articles, smaller sites that sometimes reproduce articles whole, and companies that sell packaged news feeds.

They said they did not want to stop the appearance of articles around the Web, but to exercise some control over the practice and to profit from it.

Farther down in the article, some key details emerge:

The AP and other wire services have licensing agreements with Google, Yahoo and others, for some of their content to appear on those sites' news pages, while newspapers generally do not. But general Web searches on those sites often turn up wire service material that is not covered by the agreements.

In parts of Europe, newspapers have gone further in trying to block unauthorized use of their work online. In 2007, a Belgian court blocked Google from using articles from some newspapers in that country, and Danish newspapers warned Google away from using their material without first reaching some kind of agreement. Several days ago, the British newspaper industry asked the government to intervene on its behalf to force Google to stop using newspaper articles without paying for them.

Much as I love the Internet, I don't want newspapers to die. I worked at newspapers in the San Francisco Bay Area for many years (starting at the long-dead Peninsula Times Tribune in Palo Alto), and it pains me to see them suffering and my friends getting sacked. We need all their local coverage, their investigative reports, the comics, the letters to the editor, Dear Abby, sports, obits, the whole package. "Where the press is free, and every man is able to read, all is safe," Thomas Jefferson said.

All the newspaper lovers I know are worried. My mother said she'd gladly pay more every day to keep getting the San Francisco Chronicle and all its great stories and columns.

The excessive linking and the full-on co-opting of stories is out of control on the Internet. It's time to get a grip and make sure the reporters doing the hard work are getting the recognition and money they deserve. 

If you want to read a very lively discussion on this, go to this Slashdot page.