Oh those jokesters over at the AP — the fun never ends! Last night, we wrote a post noting that Woot was (humorously) calling out the AP for not following their own ridiculous rules when quoting from content. By Woot’s calculation, using the AP tool, the AP owes them $17.50 (but Woot was nice enough to offer them the chance to buy some headphones off of Woot instead). The AP didn’t like that story — neither our’s or Woot’s.
This morning, Paul Colford, the Director of Media Relations for the AP sent emails to both me and Woot CEO Matt Rutledge. Here’s what we got: → Read More
Gotta love those guys at Woot. They just sold to Amazon for $110 million, but that’s not stopping them from calling anyone out as they see fit. In this case, we particularly love it because they’re calling out the AP — and they’re doing so right on their highly trafficked homepage.
You see, Woot noticed that the AP covered the story of their sale five days ago. But in doing so, they also noticed that the AP used a number of quotes from CEO Matt Rutledge’s blog post about the sale. According to the AP’s own ridiculous rules for using quotations, Woot figures that the AP owes them $17.50. → Read More
Online news aggregation and curation startup Publish2 is today at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference launching a new product dubbed Publish2 News Exchange, with the ambitious goal of disrupting the entire reason for being of The Associated Press.
The AP being the cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and TV stations in the US, which operates a monster news and photo distribution network that non-contributing media organizations can subscribe to (for a hefty sum, evidently).
Publish2 is taking a swing at the newswire mammoth by launching a platform that allows newspapers and other organizations tap into the vast amount of quality content already available for free on the Web. → Read More
Live video streaming on the Web is finally going mainstream. Livestream, the NYC-based live video streaming startup, just landed a one-year partnership with the Associated Press to power all of the AP’s live video streams on the Web. The first event to be streamed live under the new deal will be video from the red carpet at the Oscars this Sunday.
The video will be hosted by Livestream at APLive, where viewers can log in to chat with their Twitter or Facebook IDs. It will also be available on Facebook, where viewers will have to become a fan of APLive in order to watch. (APLive only has 1,271 fans right now). → Read More
Oh the Associated Press, our most favorite banned news source. It seems almost monthly they do something that defies logic and/or looks to be a suicidal act. And today brings another oddity.
The AP is using their Twitter feed to tweet out their stories — nothing new there, obviously — but every single one of them links to the story on their Facebook Notes page. It’s not clear how long they’ve been doing this, but Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan noted the oddness of this, and how annoying it is, tonight. The AP obviously has a ton of media partners, and they could easily link to any of those, or even the story hosted on their own site. But no, instead they’re copying all these stories to their Facebook page and linking there for no apparent reason. → Read More
Through much of last year, the Associated Press threw public barbs and veiled threats at Google, while in private it was renegotiating its licensing agreement with Google News. That agreement is believed to be up for renewal at the end of this month, yet no new AP stories have appeared directly on Google News since December 23, 2009. (AP stories licensed by other news sites such as ABC News or the New York Times do continue to appear, however). So what’s going on here? Is that the end of AP stories on Google News?
I’ve been doing some sniffing around, and it is not the AP that is withholding its content. This conclusion is also supported by the fact that older AP content from before Christmas continues to be available on Google News. If the AP were no longer licensing its articles to Google, those older articles likely would also no longer be available. (The AP has talked about withholding news from certain licensees for a set period of time, but those were measured in minutes and hours, not weeks, and it would operate on a rolling basis. The AP stories on Google News just stop on December 23). → Read More
Are you still confused about the latest twists in the AP’s copyright infringement case against artist Shepard Fairey for his use of an AP photograph as the inspiration for his famous Obama Hope poster? Just watch this Attack of the Show video in which TechCrunch’s Jason Kincaid explains how Fairey was caught lying about which image he used (a story Jason broke on Friday, even beating the AP), but still thinks he has a fair use case.
What this very public fight with Shepard Fairey boils down to, explains Jason at the end of the interview, is that if the AP “can take him down, everyone else will be scared to use AP material.” (Video after the jump).
Update: Earlier today, the AP filed an amended complaint with the court, noting the change in Shepard’s story. It also added his licensing company, Obey Clothing, as a defendant, suggesting it has evidence that he did indeed profit from the image at some point. → Read More
We reached out to Shepard Fairey about the AP’s release this evening claiming that he had admitted lying about which image he used as the source image for his iconic Hope poster. He sent us a response (reproduced below), which effectively confirms what the AP says.
Tonight’s admission focuses on the photo that Fairey originally claimed to use during his creation of the ‘Hope’ poster — he claimed to use an image other than the one the AP claims to own, and then lied and deleted evidence when he realized he was wrong. Both were taken at the same press event. The one Fairey originally said he used showed Obama next to George Clooney, the one he really used was a close-up. The AP has succeeded in character assassination (perhaps rightfully so given Fairey’s actions), but Fairey may still have a case arguing that his image is protected under fair use. Regardless of which photo he used, by painting the image and turning it into a national icon he may have transformed it enough to render the AP’s claims invalid. → Read More
The AP has just released a statement declaring that Shepard Fairey, the artist being accused of copyright infringement for his iconic ‘Hope’ poster that became ubiquitous during the Obama campaign, has “admitted to the AP that he fabricated and attempted to destroy other evidence in an effort to bolster his fair use case and cover up his previous lies and omissions.”.
According to the statement, Fairey has also admitted to using a close-up of Presdient Obama that was taken by the AP as the model for his image, not a different photo that he claimed to use that also included George Clooney, which he later cropped. The statement also says that Fairey’s legal counsel “now admitted that Fairey tried to destroy documents that would have revealed which image he actually used” and that “he created fake documents as part of his effort to conceal which photo was the source image, including hard copy printouts of an altered version of the Clooney Photo and fake stencil patterns of the Hope and Progress posters.” Finally, the AP notes that Shepard Fairey’s lawyers are withdrawing from the case. → Read More
My post yesterday about the Associated Press going after one of its own affiliates for embedding videos from the A.P.’s own YouTube channel on its Website caused a bit of a dust-up. As I noted in an update to the original post, the A.P. is now backing down and apologizing. It will allow the videos to go up again.
The A.P. also sent me a statement saying no cease-and-desist letter was ever drafted. And technically, it wasn’t. An A.P. executive delivered his warning to the radio station in an e-mail, which had the same effect as a formal letter. “This was a misunderstanding that has mushroomed into something else entirely,” an A.P.’s spokesman tells me. Here is the A.P. complete official statement: → Read More
(Updated) Here is another great moment in A.P. history. In its quest to become the RIAA of the newspaper industry, the A.P.’s executives and lawyers are beginning to match their counterparts in the music industry for cluelessness. A country radio station in Tennessee, WTNQ-FM, received a cease-and-desist letter warning from an A.P. vice president of affiliate relations for posting videos from the A.P.’s official Youtube channel on its Website.
You cannot make this stuff up. Forget for a moment that WTNQ is itself an A.P. affiliate and that the A.P. shouldn’t be harassing its own members. Apparently, nobody told the A.P. executive that the august news organization even has a YouTube channel which the A.P. itself controls, and that someone at the A.P. decided that it is probably a good idea to turn on the video embedding function on so that its videos can spread virally across the Web, along with the ads in the videos.
Frank Strovel, an employee at the radio station who tried to talk some sense into the A.P. executive Twittered yesterday: → Read More
The newspaper industry is making a lot of noise these days about the Web “stealing” its content and destroying its business. Invariably, the newsmen point their ink-stained fingers at blogs, which are nothing more than “parasites”, or at Google, which is supposedly aiding and abetting in the wholesale theft of the newspaper’s precious words. Rupert Murdoch, owner of the Wall Street Journal and other fine (and not-so-fine) publications, recently warned that the industry should no longer allow Google “to steal our copyrights.” And yesterday, the A.P. declared all out war against the Internet.
Now, there certainly is wholesale theft going on. It happens to newspapers, it happens to TechCrunch, and it happens to all big publishers on the Web. But don’t be confused. That is not what is going on here. For the most part, it is not the millions of legitimate bloggers who are doing the stealing, and it is not Google either. What is going on here is that the newspaper industry contracted by $7.5 billion last year in the U.S. alone, and it is looking for someone to blame rather than adapt to the new realities of information consumption. → Read More
With its news syndication business under direct attack by the growing abundance of other news sources on the Internet, the Associated Press announced today that it will begin to police the Web and “develop a system to track content distributed online to determine if it is being legally used.” The A.P., it appears, wants to become the RIAA of the flailing newspaper industry—ferreting out information pirates and threatening lawsuits if they don’t turn over some of their Google gold.
The A.P. has a broad view of what constitutes its content. It is not just entire articles copied wholesale by spam blogs. The A.P. has problems with the unauthorized use of its headlines, even when they include links. Many of its policies ignore the concept of fair use. And even when it has cause to go after copyright violators, it sometimes relies on antiquated and tortuous legal theories. The A.P. is so backwards in its thinking that we’ve banned links to all of its stories on TechCrunch.
Now it wants to go after unauthorized use if its news articles across the Web. Forget for a moment that its notion of what constitutes unauthorized use may not hold up in a court of law. The A.P. is going directly after the search engines and news aggregators which often point traffic away from A.P. sources directly at the supposed infringers.
So how exactly does the A.P. plan on policing the Internet? Here I must rely on informed speculation, but I think I have a pretty good idea. → Read More
The Associated Press is on the wrong of a fair use argument again. It is actually suing artist Shepard Fairey for his iconic Obama poster, which it recently discovered was based on an AP news photograph by Mannie Garcia. The poster is clearly based on that photograph (see comparison at left), but this is exactly the kind of use of copyrighted works that is meant to be protected.
The poster is art. The image it is based on has been sufficiently transformed that even the AP did not know it owned the copyright to the underlying work until a few weeks ago. And Fairey says he hasn’t made any money from the poster, although others have. You can buy the image on posters, stickers, coffee mugs and T-Shirts, and copies of the poster signed by Fairey sell for thousands of dollars. Still, the AP is suing Fairey. → Read More
Far be it for the simple gadget bloggers here at CrunchGear.com to comment on legal issues concerning fair use and quoting other news sources, but if you’ve been following the Associated Press brouhaha over the past week or so, you’ll know that plenty of people are pretty riled up. If you haven’t been following the debate, the short version is that the Associated Press now wants to charge people to quote its articles. There’s a sliding-scale fee that begins at $12.50 for quoting between 5-25 words from any AP article. This flies in the face of the concept of fair use which (very basically) allows people who report news to quote snippets of other people’s work without violating copyright, so long as we’re using that content to help explain whatever we’re reporting. → Read More
As far as I can tell, the Associated Press is sticking by its ridiculous and unlawful assertion that “direct quotations, even short ones” are copyright infringements and result in lawsuit threats and DMCA takedown notices. This story led us to ban the A.P., call the New York Times out on undisclosed conflicts of interest and begin to investigate some ridiculous organization called the Media Bloggers Association before getting bored and wandering off to other topics. But now the A.P. has gone too far. They’ve quoted twenty-two words from one of our posts, in clear violation of their warped interpretation of copyright law. The offending quote, from this post, is here (I’m suspending my A.P. ban to report on this important story). Am I being ridiculous? Absolutely. But the point is to illustrate that the A.P. is taking an absurd and indefensible position, too. So I’ve called my lawyers (really) and have asked them to deliver a DMCA takedown demand to the A.P. And I will also be sending them a bill for $12.50 with that letter, which is exactly what the A.P. would have charged me if I published a 22 word quote from one of their articles. Next time, A.P., ask permission before you quote me. I work hard to create content, and it just isn’t appropriate for you to simply cut and paste it into your own product and then sell that to others. → Read More
http://blip.tv/scripts/flash/showplayer.swf?enablejs=true&feedurl=http%3A%2F%2Ftechcrunchuk%2Eblip%2Etv%2Frss&file=http%3A%2F%2Fblip%2Etv%2Frss%2Fflash%2F1011842%3Freferrer%3Dblip%2Etv%26source%3D1&showplayerpath=http%3A%2F%2Fblip%2Etv%2Fscripts%2Fflash%2Fshowplayer%2Eswf The controversy over the Associated Press trying to create its own rules about bloggers quoting from its headlines and articles, above what the law already provides, is now a news story in England. In the video above, Sky News interviews TechCrunch UK editor Mike Butcher about the imbroglio. He points out that as long as bloggers use excerpts and link back to the original article, the law is on their side and the AP is in the wrong. Of course, we’ve already banned the AP from TechCrunch, and Mike keeps arguing with the NYT about its misguided support for the AP’s position Some choice Butcherisms from the interview: This is a huge banana skin they’ve slipped on. It is impossible to control what happens on the Internet. It is a little bit like saying everyone should walk a certain way around London. It is absolutely pointless. The Internet, some might say, is one big photocopying machine. But legitimate Websites will really just quote and link back. And it is up to mainstream media organizations to deal with the fact that this is going to happen and wake up to the new reality. → Read More
The stories over the weekend were bad enough – the Associated Press, with a long history of suing over quotations from their articles, went after Drudge Retort for having the audacity to link to their stories along with short quotations via reader submissions. Drudge Retort is doing nothing different than what Digg, TechMeme, Mixx and dozens of other sites do, and frankly the fact that they are being linked to should be considered a favor. After heavy criticism over the last few days, the A.P. is in damage control mode, says the NYTimes, and retreating from their earlier position. But from what I read, they’re just pushing their case further. They do not want people quoting their stories, despite the fact that such activity very clearly falls within the fair use exception to copyright law. They claim that the activity is an infringement. A.P. vice president Jim Kennedy says they will issue guidelines telling bloggers what is acceptable and what isn’t, over and above what the law says is acceptable. They will “attempt to define clear standards as to how much of its articles and broadcasts bloggers and Web sites can excerpt without infringing on The A.P.’s copyright.” Those that disregard the guidelines risk being sued by the A.P., despite the fact that such use may fall under the concept of fair use. The A.P. doesn’t get to make it’s own rules around how its content is used, if those rules are stricter than the law allows. So even thought they say they are making these new guidelines in the spirit of cooperation, it’s clear that, like the RIAA and MPAA, they are trying to claw their way to a set of property rights that don’t exist today and that they are not legally entitled to. And like the RIAA and MPAA, this is done to protect a dying business model – paid content. So 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. CrunchBase Information Associated Press Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
It’s like a newspaper in your phone. I like the idea of location-targeted news from the Associated Press coming straight to my iPhone (and probably iPod Touch); it’s like the local page from your newspaper, but without the cow-tipping updates. A lot of the big news corporations are on board, which means you won’t be getting locked out of good local content. There will, of course, be ads, but you’ve got those in real 3D newspapers too. They say they’ll be launching a service “Monday,” and today is Monday, so go check. → Read More
The Associated Press Online Video Network (OVN), a joint project between the AP and Microsoft, has implemented a new syndicated video feature that will allow AP affiliates around the world to easily share content with each other’s websites. Members are able to selectively choose which affiliates will be allowed to use their media, and receive a portion of the revenue earned on these remote sites. The AP wire service was originally created to help distribute costs across all members of media networks, including those associated with television, radio, and newspapers. The online video syndication feature is a logical step in this regard. This feature will be especially useful in situations where video is only coming from local sources (such as during a natural disaster). An affiliate will be able to share its content with any number of participating members nationally while excluding close competitors, allowing it to retain exclusivity in its own regional market. If affiliates choose to sell advertising against their local content they keep 100% of the advertising revenue. If they decide to syndicate that content across the network they will earn 30% of revenue gathered from the affiliate sites featuring their video. According to Robert Aitken, product manager for AP’s online video, there are currently over 1,800 affiliates participating in the network. These are not restricted to television networks – many are newspapers and radio stations that have created media-rich websites for their users. Possible competitors to the OVN include ClipSyndicate. AP’s OVN also announced today that AnswersTV would be its exclusive provider of Health and Lifestyle video content. AnswersTV is a cross-platform television network, providing original HD programming on subjects including food, health, and magic. CrunchBase Information ClipSyndicate Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
