Associated Press Attacks Google

Feeling the bite of new media encroaching upon their old media territory, the AP says that online news portals take their links, their headlines, and even their entire articles, and then reproduce them on other sites without first getting permission and paying for the privilege.

News aggregators are countering the AP’s challenge by saying that they shouldn’t have to pay for a sentence or a headline from an AP article because of the "fair use doctrine" a copyright law that allows limited use of copyrighted material without requiring permission. Google and other news aggregators also point out the fact that the snippets of content they use often drive people to the AP’s website, so the AP should be thanking them instead of criticizing them. That stance makes sense to the AP, but their beef is with the reproduction of entire articles on news aggregator sites, including Google.

The newspaper industry in general has been taking a huge hit from new media encroachment for several years. The AP is owned by newspapers, including the New York Times, and it gathers news from hundreds of print media outlets. So with subscriptions to print media and newspaper advertising steadily dwindling, the newspaper industry—and the AP—is desperately trying to hang on to its online content and keep it from being exploited.

The AP is developing methods for tagging and tracking online content to winnow out articles that have not been paid for, in an effort to recapture some of the money news aggregators make from using AP content. For example, both Yahoo and Google make money from ads posted on AP articles that are accessed by clicking on a link in search engine results. Many newspapers have deals with the AP to use their content, but such agreements are not common with individual newspapers.

To offset the challenge of protecting their online content, the AP has announced that they will reduce rates and provide more content for subscribers beginning next year. Their goal is to be more flexible and affordable in order to remain relevant in the digital age and to try to recoup some profit from what they consider to be exploitation from online news aggregators. They say that top search engine results should point to the original source of content—sites that have paid for the AP article—rather than to sites that simply reproduce the content for free.

In their annual meeting in San Diego, AP chairman William Dean Singleton told the group that the AP wants to work with news portals who legally license AP content. But they aren’t going to be as agreeable to news aggregators who claim the fair use doctrine gives them permission to use AP content. Said Singleton, "We can no longer stand by and watch others walk off with our work under misguided legal theories."