It's not about Google, Yahoo and others posting the information they paid for. As is clearly stated in the article, it is about Google, Yahoo and others posting information they did *not* pay for.

Why is it so wrong to want to be paid for your work?

No, AP does not want "money for web sites that list or link to it's articles". The want people to pay for their work. If you have a link "AP story about earthquake in Italy", they are not going to say anything. However, provide verbatim copies of the lead paragraph you are beyond the scope of "fair use" as it has already provided the news service.

If there is a page with 20 headlines, and absolutely nothing else, I am likely to click on one or more of the links, thus going to a site that has paid for the AP feed. However, if there are 20 headlines which include the lead paragraph, I have already gained the necessary benefit without clicking the link. So the paying customer does not get the benefit of my visit, only the freeloader does.

AP says, ""This is not about defining fair use. There's a bigger economic issue at stake here that we're trying to tackle." Either companies like AP find other sources of revenue or the only thing we have left is Faux News. Since they make up everything in the backroom anyway, they don't have the the costs of sending people to war zones or areas devastated by earthquakes.

Pay people for their work!!!

Who said it has been "acceptable"? I don't know of anyone. It has simply been tolerated. Marijuana use in Holland is tolerated and you usually don't get arrest for smoking or even selling it. However, it it is still not acceptable. AP didn't bother with the problem until now because we were not in a recession. Now we are. Newspapers are closing and so they are loosing customers. Either they get the freeloaders to pay for the work or they stop doing the work. Besides, it is not an issue of "Re-reporting news". It is an issue of copying someone else's work, earning money by copying it and not paying for the original work. I know this is /., but please RTFA.

To so extent I might agree that my analogy is not 100% the same. However, your's is not either. I think the book would be a better one. Assume I wrote a book and someone takes an except from it and publishes it as an article in a magazine. Neither I nor my publisher get anything for it.

While code snippets or excerpts from books fall within the category of "fair use", I personally believe the article snippets do not. If the article contains 1000 words, then a 50 word snippet is 5%. Do you have the right to borrow my book from someone who bought it themselves and then re-print 25 contiguous page of my 500 page book? By the time I read the first 50 words of the 1000 word article, I have already gained the "news benefit" and without anyone paying for the work done. Obviously there is more to the story, but readers still have benefit from the 5% plus the aggregate site benefits, all without paying the person who actually did the work. So, it is not like "Hey, news site X is carrying this neat story! Go read it!" because the aggregation site is obviously providing more than just a headline. With the snippit the site is giving you the *intended* benefit (news) and gaining a commercial benefit themselves. AP gets nothing for their work.

Then you have the issue of sites providing links to people who have simply copied the article without paying for it. I personally think it is unethical to have a commercial benefit from that link without paying for the material. People visit the aggregation sites because they are aggregation sites. They then collect advertising income. It is even more unethical to gain commericial benefit and then hide behind the statement "I didn't provide material illegally, I just pointed you to it."

The biggest problem I see is the freetards who do not want to pay for other people's work and are the first ones to complain when someone doesn't pay them. These are usually the same group who say you *must* follow the GPL (or whatever license) but do not have to listen to others about how to treat the other person's work. (that is, they can distribute music or articles all they want) It's hypocritical to put it mildly.

I personally support the right of the record companies to prosecute people who share music to the general public, although I do not support the tactics of the RIAA. It is not your place to say the record companies are making "too much". They made an investment in a band, have to cover the advertisement and distribution costs and run the risk of the album being a flop. Is it wrong for them to make money? If you think so, then simply stop buying CDs and DVDs, and stop going to movies. If enough people did that then maybe the record companies would get the message. However, by putting music or news articles online without paying for that right, you are stealing or at least you are aiding the theft. If you download it, you *are* stealing. Period. You have no absolute right to that music. (In Germany, there is no problem with making a copy for your sister or neighbor. However, making it publicly available is illegal.)

I run an informational website for *free*. I have Google ads to help cover my costs. Is it really fair or ethical to block the ads? Although you are not paying for anything, you are actively denying me a little big to help cover my costs. Is that ethically or morally correct? Certain features are only available if you register (for *free*). Is it fair or ethical for people to publicly provide a username and password to access these features "anonymously" so you do not have to register yourself? (this *has* happened) This is worse in my mind than stealing movies or music, as you would have access to the features and information for free if you were simply willing to following my rules for *free*.

It seems like too many people believe that as long are you are not personally effected, then you should not have to pay for other people's work. I would be curious to know how many people reading this think it is OK to provide others with a username and password to access my site (thus violating my terms of use), but it would *not* be OK for me to violate the terms of the GPL. How many think it is OK to violate the terms on a CD or DVD but it is not OK to violate the terms of the GPL?

BTW, I actually make financial contributions to three different open source projects. (one of which is included as a standard part of KDE)

How many sysadmins do we have reading this? We are knowledge workers or perhaps, better yet "information workers". We are paid for not only having the information in our heads but also for processing that information into something useful (e.g. a backup concept, a Perl script, a freshly installed database.) The company we work for gets paid for providing that processed information to customers. (or at least they *want* to get paid)

How would *we* feel if our customers sold the backup concept or Perl script to someone else? Is that OK? What about cloning the hard disk with the OS and database we installed? Is that OK?

AP pays reporters to either to go get the stories or pays for already written stories. In other words, they pay for someone's knowledge and for the processing of that knowledge into a more easily usable form. How is that different from a Perl script? If we get upset because AP expects people to pay for that story they paid for, then we cannot get upset if our customer decides to make money off of that Perl script we wrote. They don't need to sell it, just implement it 1:1 on a different system.

If I wrote a book on Linux, in all likelihood the information is available for free somewhere on the Internet. I am simply processing it a more usable form. (perhaps easier to read) Since "information wants to be free", everyone should have the right to simply copy the book and give it away to whomever I like, right? Or perhaps 1000 sites provide half-page excerpts from the book and "by coincidence" a tool that will combine those excepts into a single document. That's OK because no single site it providing the entire book, right?

Let's assume you are not the one who copied it, but you simply have link to a website which contains my complete book. Perhaps that is not directly illegal, but it is not immoral? Unethical? Unfair?

On my site I do not have a copy of your Perl script or an ISO image of the hard disk with the database you installed. I just have a link to the site that does. Even if the script is available for free on *your* website, shouldn't *you* have the right to say what other people can do with it?

If we are not going to respect the right AP has to make money from their work, why should I care when *your* job is outsourced to India? Like your company when IT operations end up on Mumbai, Google is simply trying to save money. That's OK, right?

Not in today's market. Many publishers want books out there really fast, so they are willing to take anyone who can spell the product's name. All you need to do is be able to take existing documentation and put it together somewhat coherently without really understanding what it means. I just did a tech review of a book on an open source admin product and it was obvious from the examples that the author had (probably) never used the product in the real world and possible never even administered a Linux system. I am actually glad that I was not mentioned for having worked on it.

I wrote my first one primarily using vi.

My experience with Germans is that they are usually more interested in following procedures that "getting things done". "Ordnung muss sein" (engl. "You must have order")