AP to crack down on websites that copy its news
Google insists news service's complaint not directed its way
Last Updated: Tuesday, April 7, 2009 | 1:21 PM ET
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'We must be paid fully and fairly,' Dean Singleton, CEO of MediaNews Group, Inc., and chairman of the Associated Press board of directors, told the AP annual meeting Monday. (Reed Saxon/Associated Press)The Associated Press plans to send more of its lawyers after news aggregators and other websites that post its articles online without permission.
"We can no longer stand by and watch others walk off with our work under misguided legal theories," said Dean Singleton, chair of the U.S.-based co-operative news network in a statement at AP's annual meeting in San Diego on Monday. "We are mad as hell, and we are not going to take it any more."
Singleton reported that over the weekend, AP's board of directors agreed unanimously to "take all actions necessary" to protect its news and digital content from "misappropriation on the internet." He added that he believes the co-operative's members, which include 1,400 daily newspapers in the U.S., will join its fight.
"AP and its member newspapers and broadcast associate members are the source of most of the news content being created in the world today," Singleton said. "We must be paid fully and fairly."
AP said in a news release that its strategy is to:
- Develop a system to track online content and determine whether it is being legally used.
- Create new search pages to direct readers to news content from AP and its members over other sources.
- Work with partners who properly license content.
- Pursue legal and legislative actions against those who do not.
AP has previously launched lawsuits against a number of alleged copyright violators, including:
- All Headline News Corp., a Florida-based online aggregator alleged to have copied and rewritten AP stories.
- Moreover Technologies Inc., an aggregator that is a subsidiary of VeriSign Inc., which AP claimed improperly displayed AP headlines, and reproduced full articles and photos through subscription services. The two sides reached an undisclosed settlement in 2008.
- Knowledge Networks Inc., a market research company that eventually paid $300,000 US to settle claims that it improperly distributed AP articles and articles from other publishers in its press packets.
- Artist Shepard Fairey, who altered an AP photo of Barack Obama to create iconic campaign posters last year.
The company also announced at its annual meeting Monday that it will be lowering rates and offering more licensing options to its member newspapers, who have been suffering from significant drops in revenue.
'It doesn't appear to pertain to Google'
Meanwhile, Google issued a statement Tuesday countering speculation that it might be one of the targets of AP's ramped-up fight against news aggregators.
"It doesn't appear to pertain to Google since we host those articles in partnership with the AP," said a posting by Alexander Macgillivray, Google's associate general counsel for products and intellectual property, on the Google Public Policy Blog.
Macgillivray added that as part of agreements such as the one with AP, Google pays news agencies and displays the entire text of articles.
AP and other several wire services that don't have their own consumer websites have had a hosting agreement with Google since 2007. AP had reached a licensing deal with Google the year before that.
In cases where Google crawls and indexes articles but does not host them, Google itself shows only a headline and a line or two of text, along with a link to the news publisher's website, Macgillivray said. Google has long claimed that qualifies as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Act.
