[A2k] Wall Street Journal: AP to Fight Illegal Use of Content on Web Sites

[Thiru Balasubramaniam]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123905948579094887.html

     * TECHNOLOGY
     * APRIL 7, 2009

AP to Fight Illegal Use of Content on Web Sites



By RUSSELL ADAMS

The Associated Press said Monday it is launching an initiative to
better control its newspaper members' material online.

Under the initiative, whose details are still being determined, the AP
will work with Web portals and other digital partners to track -- and
pursue legal action against -- publishers that use this content on the
Web without a license.

How and where content appears online has become a contentious issue
for many of the AP's more than 1,400 U.S. newspaper members, which
already are struggling with steep revenue declines. In that
environment, the AP's board also announced on Monday additional
reductions to newspaper members' annual rates, which are into the
seven figures for larger dailies. The changes will reduce the AP's
total membership fees for 2010 by $35 million, and follow its move
last year to slash $30 million from the fees.

For most of its 163-year history, the AP mainly served its newspaper
members. That began to change over the past decade as the organization
invested in photo and video journalism and later began tailoring its
content for use by Internet portals such as Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc.
Those portals pay the AP for use of its content. Many news aggregators
do not pay, however.

Even the paying customers have become a sore spot for publishers
because they don't directly pay newspapers. AP feeds those sites
stories from both the organization's own staff and the member papers,
and the sites host a few lines from those stories, with a link, on
news pages that carry ads.

"Pure traffic generation isn't enough to pay for the content," said
Brian Tierney, chief executive of the company that publishes the
Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News.

Tom Brettingen, the AP's senior vice president and chief revenue
officer, said the AP is only starting to explore ways to get
compensated for its and its members' content. "This is a step, a step
in a process," he said.

Google and other portals say they are in full compliance with
copyright laws by publishing only part of each story and that users
who want the full story are directed to the publisher's Web site.

"We believe search engines are of real benefit to newspapers, driving
valuable traffic to their Web sites and connecting them with new
readers around the world," said Gabriel Stricker, a Google spokesman.
He added that publishers can easily prevent their Web sites from
appearing in Google's search results.
=97Shira Ovide and Jessica E. Vascellaro contributed to this article.

Write to Russell Adams at russell.adams@wsj.com

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Thiru Balasubramaniam
Geneva Representative
Knowledge Ecology International (KEI)
thiru@keionline.org


Tel: +41 22 791 6727
Mobile: +41 76 508 0997