Big brother got a kid sister today, and she’ll be watching you closely.
Flickr image from user akanekal
The media blogosphere was a-crackin’ today after The Associated Press announced its intent to:
“create a news registry that will tag and track all AP content online to assure compliance with terms of use. The system will register key identifying information about each piece of content that AP distributes as well as the terms of use of that content, and employ a built-in beacon to notify AP about how the content is used.”
Hm. Is this OK?
After reading some of the reaction to this announcement, in particular a post written by author and professor Jeff Jarvis’ – that the AP attempting, but will likely fail, to kill the link economy – I decided I don’t think AP’s fancy new “wrapper” system is a problem.
Yes, the AP will be monitoring the use of its content more closely. So what?
Today’s announcement is really just about a somewhat cool bit of technology. In fact, I think big companies like Google should be more supportive of this kind of technology. I’m not an expert, but can refer to an explanation of ACAP and why search engines don’t like it.)
What Jarvis is really worried about is what the AP will or will not do when it finds its content cited, linked to or quoted.
He references one of my favorite Martin Luther King, Jr., quotes when he writes “If the AP goes after ANYONE for linking that affects EVERYONE” in the comments section of this CJR post on the subject.
Not sure I think this is all that serious.
Flickr image from user Brian Indrelunas
I read just now the AP’s Terms and Conditions. It does not allow anyone to “copy, reproduce, publish, transmit, transfer, sell, rent, modify, create derivative works from, distribute, repost, perform, display, or in any way commercially exploit the Materials carried on this site, nor may you infringe upon any of the copyrights or other intellectual property rights contained in the Materials.”
Granted, The AP does have a reputation for being intermittently tough on bloggers who quote lines of AP content. It puzzlingly went after the Drudge Report about a year ago, asking Matt Drudge to remove lines quoting from the AP from seven stories.
At that time, there was a lot of reaction and attention paid to an AP fee sheet for use of its content.
The hippie illegal downloader of music and movies in me thinks the AP is absurd to try and apply such stringent standards to the link-based Internet. Its board of directors clearly don’t understand how this medium works.
But the girl who desperately wants to try and support her travel habits on a reporter/editor salary thinks content creators have the right to protect the economic value of their work. And that’s what the new tag and tracking system should give AP the opportunity to do – after it gives AP a better understanding of how its content is being referenced/used online.
After all, it makes sense to try and really understand how content is being used on the Internet before deciding the best Fair Use policy for this “new” medium.