MediaWatch: Could AP Ban On Blogs Extend To 1500 Daily Newspapers?

Posted by Tom Foremski - June 16, 2008

Associated Press recently said that excerpts from its stories should not be used by bloggers unless there was specific commentary about the excerpt. Dan Farber sums things up nicely here: Welcome to the Web refactory, AP

Fundamentally, the Web is a content "refactory," in which new material is factored out of antecedent matter and connected in an information "web" via links and snippets.

The AP or any other source of so-called original content that is built partly on preexisting content easily accessible on the Internet can either participate in the Web refactory and live with the fuzziness, or become a pariah.

Foremski's Take: Critics of the AP policy say that it will lose Internet traffic for its stories. But it can't monetize that traffic effectively anyway.

Also, there's an interesting wrinkle here. AP is owned by 1500 daily newspapers. What if each daily newspaper allows excerpts and links? Will AP change its syndication rules with its owners? Will its owners be happy with such a policy since it could decrease traffic to their online sites?

Or is this the tip of an iceberg - will daily newspapers also institute such a policy?

How about news aggregators such as Google News? They take the headline and first paragraph of a news story without even blogging anything about it. Interestingly, Google does have a financial deal with AP so maybe other news aggregators will get a call from AP's lawyers?

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