What the A.P. is Missing

I was just reading an article at Tech Crunch asking the question, Does Google  Really Control the News?  While the story was not directly related to my thesis, it pointed out something that I had missed in the whole A.P. content controversy.  We’ve argued that the A.P. benefits when bloggers quote and link to them because we send them more traffic.  That’s certainly true as far as it goes but it’s not the end of the story.

Search engine rankings are based in large part on how many inbound links exist to your site, article, story, etc.  Every link boosts your ranking even if only minimally.  Links from larger sites with more traffic are more beneficial but all links help you.  So every time a blogger links to an A.P. story, not only does that directly drive some traffic from the link, it also helps improve the search engine ranking for that story at the A.P.

If all of us stopped linking to any A.P. stories, the result would be significantly lower search engine ranking for the A.P., resulting in much lower total traffic for them.  My particular site might be small but my impact is larger than just the traffic sent directly from my site because I also impact search engine rankings.

We hold more power than any of us generally believes but only if we act in concert.  Individually we can do very little.  I’d be willing to bet, however, that the loss of all blog links would do significant damage to traffic to the A.P. and they’d be forced to rethink their position.

Also see:

• Once Again: The A.P. Says It’s Going To Sue Aggregators
• Boycott the A.P.!
• The Washington Times Copies the AP – Starts Charging Bloggers to Quote Them

 

www.Wednesday: The Washington Times Copies the AP – Starts Charging Bloggers to Quote Them

I was a sent a lead today by a publishing agent to an article published by one of his clients. In the process of researching to see if I wanted to write about the article, I noticed that the Washington Times is now using a system that is very similar to the one used by the Associated Press, whereby it is charging bloggers to quote from its stories.

If you want to check it out, click on the “Click here for reprint permissions!” link at the bottom of their stories. Basically, you can use the story for a month but then it has to be taken down, or you have to pay at least $300. Bloggers usually don’t take stories down after a period of time, because we rely on links to and from those stories to help us build page rank in the search engines.

For more information on the mainstream media’s war on new media, check out the latest attempt by the Associated Press to intimidate bloggers, HERE.

What does this mean for bloggers, citizen journalists, members of the new media? It simply means that we need to do what we should have been doing all along – know our rights under the fair use laws, do our own research, link to each other, and refuse to allow anyone to monopolize the free flow of information.

Once Again: The A.P. Says It’s Going To Sue Aggregators

From TechDirt.com:

from the this-ought-to-be-fun… dept

Given some of the Associated Press’s recent actions, this won’t come as a surprise, but the AP has now announced that it will start suing any news aggregator that doesn’t share its profits with the AP:

“We can no longer stand by and watch others walk off with our work under misguided legal theories.”

I’m a bit curious what those “misguided theories” are… because copyright law and rules concerning fair use seem pretty clear, and search engines aggregating info and sending people to your site has been ruled fair use before. So, perhaps the AP chairman is talking about some other “misguided” legal theory? Another AP person claims: “This is not about defining fair use. There’s a bigger economic issue at stake here that we’re trying to tackle.” But she neglects to say what that is, other than our old business model sucks, and we’ve got no freaking clue how to adapt to the changing market place, so this is the best we’ve got…

That said, I’m not sure how this is any different than how the AP has acted in the past…Continue reading on TechDirt.com >>

Also see: Boycott the A.P.!

Boycott the A.P.! (Button Code and New Updates)

Updated: See LGF – Blogs are Being Watched:

Business Week has an interesting article on the technology the Associated Press and other media outlets are using to find and identify their copyrighted content on the Internet: Bloggers: Big Media Is Watching.

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Button Code at bottom of post.

Original Post 6/23/08:

The Associated Press is in the process of trying to gain a monopoly on the news, and we can’t let them. Please see Fair Use v. Plagiarism/Copyright Infringement, and now: AP Settles Dispute with Drudge Retort, from Rogers Cadenhead, who runs the Drudge Report (hat-tip, Ron):

I think AP and other media organizations should focus on how to encourage bloggers to link their stories in the manner they like, rather than hoping their lawyers can rebottle the genie of social news. Given the publicity of this dispute, the first blogger sued for excerpting a news story will have the best pro bono legal representation that massive press attention can buy.

Read more

The AP v. the Blogosphere – What will happen next? (Poll)

The Associated Press is currently in the process of negotiating with a group of bloggers, regarding copyright permissions on using excerpts of its stories.

For more on this story, see our post from yesterday: Fair Use v. Plagiarism/Copyright Infringement

We would like to know what you think will happen next.

Fair Use v. Plagiarism/Copyright Infringement (Updated: Another Blogger Takes a Stand, and the A.P. owes Michelle Malkin $132,125 under its new guidelines!)

(Updates at Bottom of Post)

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Original Post, 06/17/08: Yesterday, the folks at TechCrunch made what might seem like at odd announcement regarding stories from the Associated Press (A.P.):

…Here’s our new policy on A.P. stories: they don’t exist. We don’t see them, we don’t quote them, we don’t link to them. They’re banned until they abandon this new strategy, and I encourage others to do the same until they back down from these ridiculous attempts to stop the spread of information around the Internet…

What is this about?! Read more