At AP’s annual meeting on Monday, AP Board Chairman Dean Singleton said, in so many words, that news aggregators are going to have to pay up for using AP stories or get sued.
Here’s what the NY Times reports about the speech that has bloggers and others talking.
The A.P. will “work with portals and other partners who legally license our content” and will “seek legal and legislative remedies against those who don’t,” the A.P. chairman, William Dean Singleton, said Monday in a speech at the group’s annual meeting, in San Diego. “We can no longer stand by and watch others walk off with our work under misguided legal theories.”
News aggregators and search companies have long asserted that collecting snippets of articles — usually headlines and a sentence or two — is allowed under the legal doctrine of “fair use.” News organizations have been reluctant to test that idea in court, and it is still not clear whether The A.P. is willing to test the fair use doctrine.
Here’s the AP press release..
And here’s the Paid Content interview with Singleton.
It will be very interesting to see how this turns out.
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PS: This would be the day that I link in a big way to an AP story.
I can’t stand the AP, but I don’t blame them for wanting to find a way to be compensated for their intellectual(?) property. Maybe they could get the ASCAP gestapo to collect for them.
AP Planning to Start Suing Aggregators?
At first I thought that the AP was suing alligators. Someone needs to show these dangerous animals that our laws have teeth, too. Turn ’em into shoes and handbags until the attacks stop!
I know that first bit of troll bait was directed at me, but a little truth to asininity is appropriate here.
Five of the six founding members of ASCAP were Jewish. Indeed, after 20 years of working there I can assure that most of the hate directed towards ASCAP consisted of comments like “How quickly do you turn these payments over to Israel” or “Hope you Jews put this money to good use” or “Do I have to write you in Hebrew?”
Most of these were from states like Louisiana, Mississsippi and Georgia.
Proof?
ASCAP was founded by Irving Berlin, Gustav Kerker, Jerome Kern, Victor Herbert, Otto Harbach and John Phillip Sousa. Sousa was the one non-Jewish founder.
As for the rest of my experience, it was first hand and there is correspondence in ASCAP’s files that show some of this.
Are you calling me a liar?
Not in the least. I’m just pulling the same stunt that you do whenever I write something that you don’t want to believe, even though it’s true.
Did you handle collections in LA, Miss, or GA to know these things first hand in those states? Weren’t the founders dead by the time that you came along to work for the company, so why would people still be making anti-semitic remarks about dead people (even though they were alive enough to vote Democratic)?
Maybe you can start a new business to threaten and collect money from bloggers who quote articles from the AP.
Here, Randy. You need to cover important things like this on your site: Brazilian beauty Adriana Lima shows off her amazing curves in Victoria’s Secret Swimwear shoot
Did you handle collections in LA, Miss, or GA to know these things first hand in those states?
Yes, I licensed radio stations in those states. I attended state broadcaster associations in all of those states. I witnessed specific comments personally. I also heard similar sentiments described by broadcasters in Idaho.
Your comparison on its face is incorrect. If you have witnessed something personally, I won’t ask for proof.
As for Adriana Lima,she attends mass at my church when she’s in New York. They have a mass in Portuguese for the Brazilian community here and I have chatted with he. She’s quite gracious and friendly. Let me also assure you of this: she’s even more stunning in person.
That being said, I certainly wouldn’t feel comfortable exploiting her physical attributes to drive traffic to my site.
Randy, it seems as if you’re giving a broad brush condemnation to a region based upon very spotty experience. If someone talked to a number of people from NYC and found them to be rude, would it be right to assume that everyone in NYC is that way? I still don’t know why a businessman would say someting anti-semitic to a Catholic.
Also, you have wanted “proof” for my observations and even independent proof of my opinions.
I didn’t say to exploit Lima…just to post about her as part of the business exchange programs between Brazil and the U.S. She just seemed more important than things that reg posts at your site. In addition, this South American babe isn’t too bad – Patricia Velasquez. She studied accounting.
Randy, it seems as if you’re giving a broad brush condemnation to a region based upon very spotty experience
Not at all. I’m just showing you how thoroughly inappropriate your use of the term Gestapo was to describe ASCAP employees doing their job protecting their members’ right under the law.
I would have never connected the two. Yes, Gestapo was an extreme term for ASCAP, but you should know me by now. Maybe they are more like the IRS.
I would have never connected the two.
Yet you attempted to.
“you should know me by now”
Grim, unfortunate truth…
What the hell does this have to do with anything?
Good night, Randy. What I was saying is that I would never have connected my use of the term Gestapo with the hidden purpose of your response, which was: “I’m just showing you how thoroughly inappropriate your use of the term Gestapo was to describe ASCAP employees doing their job protecting their members’ right under the law.” Not many people would have gotten that link, since you did it so poorly.
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John Moore, this was my response to Randy on his statement that you highlighted above: Weren’t the founders dead by the time that you came along to work for the company, so why would people still be making anti-semitic remarks about dead people….?
Apparently, according to Randy, an organization with Jewish founders will suffer anti-semitism decades after the death of the founders.
Hey, wasn’t the Christian church founded by Jews! Then, when the collection plate is passed in church, why haven’t I heard people saying what Randy claims that they say, “Hope you Jews put this money to good useâ€Â? Maybe like most liberals, he loves to be “offended” to appear superior. It’s all in his head – which isn’t a lot.
John Moore,
I’ll type this slowly so you understand: Woody’s use of the term “ASCAP Gestapo” was offensive and it was doubly offensive in light of the fact that the ethnic background of many of the founding members would be anathema to the Gestapo. Got it?
Woody, the mere facts that I breath and think makes me superior to you.
Go make someone squeal like a pig.
Weren’t the founders dead by the time that you came along to work for the company, so why would people still be making anti-semitic remarks about dead people….?
Woody, I attended Irving Berlin’s Centennial Celebration in 1988, three years after I started working at ASCAP.
BTW, the reason my last name is Paul is because my father, a Ukrainian Jewish immigrant was working in a small town in Georgia and was advised by another Jewish friend to change his name from Polsky. A wise move as it had been not longer after Leo Frank had been lynched.
Strange, I would expect that a person with the last name “Paul” would be Jewish, but that someone with the last name “Polsky” could be Polish or anything. But, he turns out to Catholic!
How can a good Catholic support an abortion protector like Obama?
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And, really now, Randy, Leo Frank was murdered in 1915 in the Atlanta area, after being wrongly convicted, but still convicted, of rape and murder. Frank could have been cleared had the real perpetrator, a black man name Jim Conley stepped forward, but instead he lied and implicated Frank to let him take the rap for the crime. (In its closing statements, the defense attempted to divert suspicion from Frank to Conley. Lead defense attorney Luther Rosser, said to the jury: “Who is Conley? He is a dirty, filthy, black, drunken, lying, nigger.” Leo Frank himself had issued a widely publicized statement questioning how the “perjured vaporizings of a black brute” could be accepted in testimony against him.)
This was very likely long before your dad came along. Did people go around indiscriminately lynching Jews during your father’s lifetime? I doubt that your dad was in danger, but better safe than sorry. Still, one case doesn’t prove a rule.
You just love being offended and being a victim to try to shut up others or appear superior. Sorry, it doesn’t work with me.