While I don’t condone stealing copyrighted works, I’ve long recognized the Associated Press’s outright hostility to the Internet. While it could’ve raked in plenty of online advertising dollars, the AP has never played well with the Internet. Never.
Now word comes down that the AP will be going after bloggers who post AP stories.
“We can no longer stand by and watch others walk off with our work under some very misguided, unfounded legal theories,” said Dean Singleton, the AP’s chairman and the chief executive of newspaper publisher MediaNews Group at AP’s annual meeting.
(gosh, I hope I can use that quote safely!)
The AP has never provided proper links to its stories, thus anyone discussing an AP story has to cut-and-paste the desired excerpts because AP stories disappear into the ether so quickly.
Again, I don’t have a problem with the AP trying to make money on its product – some of my closest friends have been quoted in AP stories, after all. When the company shows such evident disdain for its online audience, however, perhaps that audience should rightfully go elsewhere.