AP to Charge Members to Post Content Online

oboreruhito writes "The Associated Press has announced that, effective Jan. 1 2006, it 'will begin charging newspapers and broadcasters to post its stories, photos and other content online.' The article says online portals that are already subscribed to an online service won't be affected; the change is that newspapers and broadcasters, which have had the privilege of posting online at no extra charge over their usual licensing fees for print or TV, now have to pay extra. How will this affect sites like Google News and Fark?"

FARK doesn't repost stories...

[stonedonkey]

It just links to them. Same with Google News. Google posts a blurb, but its length is short enough to avoid copyright infringement (i.e., less than 100 words). The images in Google News link directly back to the domain where the story was posted. Sounds like the AP is asking everyone to prioritize Rueters over them, inadvertently. It also sounds like the AP is starting to recognize the Internet as a very influential source of information. It's not nearly ubiquitous as radio and TV, but it reaches a powerful demographic.

not about linking to content

[Anonymous Coward]

This has to do with letting newspapers, etc., use the feeds they get from AP for online press. The newspapers are paying for the premium of having breaking stories delivered in preformatted form so they can get them out with little work. They pay so they can their news on time so their readers can in turn get their news on time through them. All the article is stating is that the AP is instituting a pricing cchange for this service that they have been providing and that it will affect what existing customers are paying.
Aggregators and bloggers link back to these sites but since they don't pay for an AP feed they have to wait for the news to be posted. Their situation has not changed as a result of AP's policy since they were never customers to begin.

Does anyone really get what this means?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems to me that all the talk about google is off topic.

This has no effect on my ability to post a link to an AP story, say on Yahoo.com.

What it does is target places like http://www.nj.com.

This is the web site of the Newark Star Ledger. For years, this site has been taking stories off of the New Jersey state wire and posting the stories on line, without paying anything addionally to the AP.

All this change means is if nj.com wants to continue posting state wire stories to the web site, it will have to pay for the right to do so.

Everyone is hyperventilating about this story. The AP has always gone after sites that post entire stories without first getting permisson or paying for it.

The only thing this changes is that now the MEMBERS (meaning radio stations, newspapers and television stations) will have to pay extra.

Google is NOT an AP member (membership means the AP can take stories from it's members and rewrite and put on it's own wires.), nor is Yahoo (it's a customer -- it doesn't provide stories to the AP, only pays for them.)

Don't Despair!

[ImaLamer]

There is always Wikinews [wikinews.org], a public domain news source.

Re:Google and Fark?

[nacturation]

This is a non-story. These two paragraphs FTA sum it up well:

About 300 commercial Web sites, including popular destinations such as Yahoo, AOL and MSN, already have been buying AP content, said Jane Seagrave, the news cooperative's director of new media markets.

But price increases are often a prickly issue for the AP because it's a not-for-profit cooperative that is owned by its customers _ the traditional media that form its membership.

So it's like the RIAA charging member bands a bit more to allow websites to post sound clips. What's the big deal here? Hundreds of websites already pay to have it online. All this does is end the free ride for traditional print publications to stick it on their site as well.

Am I confussed?

[kryptik_79]

Unless I'm mistaken, this will not effect google and fark... "The article says online portals that are already subscribed to an online service won't be affected"

Newspapers and broadcasters that currently liscense AP's material for their print/broadcast mediums will now have to pay an additional liscense fee to reproduce it within their online properties.

I see nothing wrong with this

How the AP works

[Anonymous Coward]

I work in the news busness and I would like to add a few things here.

First and formost AP is a virtual monopoly in the U.S. Think of Mircosoft and then think 10 times worse. The AP has been scared whitless about the internet for years but not for the reasons you might think. The AP monopoly has been sustained by having control over the means of distribution of the news. It should be clear that the internet represent a threat to the distribution system that has permitted the AP to maintain it monopoly.

The AP is a "cooperative" it is owned by its members, the newspapers and broadcasters. But if there ever was a case of the tail wagging the dog this is it.

The AP has for years owned a service that puts its content on line for members. This service cost member's several hundreds dollars a week. The problem has always been that the members could figure out how to take the AP content from their systems and post it without the use of AP system.

So now, in order to get to these papers and broadcaster AP will try and charge for this kind of use as well.

Now the members could object to this, but they wont. No matter how badly the AP treats it members it members always roll over for them. Why, you ask?

Because AP has a Monopoly in state and regional reports. If your a daily newspaper owner you need those reports unless you want to staff reporters all over your state, something few newspapers can afford to do. So AP knows this and has you right where they want you. They charge a great deal of money for the first part of the AP report, the state report the one you need, and then a little extra for the others (national, regional, photo, etc.) Then they sign you up on a self renewing contract which renews every night at midnight. You have to give them a one-year notice to drop the service. The result is that no newspaper ever does this because to replace AP with Reuters or UPI would require you to pay for two news services! Again something few small market papers can afford to do.

UPI, Reuters and AFP are all fine services at covering major national and international news but none of them have the regional and state coverage that publishers need. Only AP offers that and they will do what ever it takes to maintain that monopoly.

Now you ask how do they get all this state news this news? Does AP have reporters stationed in each small city in the state. Well this is where it get's really weird. No they don't have reporters all over everywhere. It turns out they get the news from the very papers that are paying them. They take those stories remove any reference to the original paper and resend it to all the "members". If you did this in college they would kick you out but in the case of the AP it's called a business model.

The other agencies always cite the source of the story but not the AP. So the AP member is paying, and I mean paying a great deal a midsized paper pays well over $3000 a week for the normal AP service, to have their own storis sent back to them. In one paper I am aware of the majority of the state report is the copy of that very paper sent back to them 24 hours after it was printed.

Well I hope some of you have found this informative.