The Associated Press (AP) announced on Monday, April 6 that it would crack down on Web sites and search engines that use the work of the news organization without first obtaining permission from them and agreeing to share profits. In an effort to “exercise some control” over the practice of reposting articles and gaining profit from selling packaged news feeds, the AP plans to take legal action against these sites.
According to a New York Times article, AP executives said they were “concerned about a variety of news forums around the Web, including major search engines like Google and Yahoo and aggregators like the Drudge Report that link to news articles, smaller sites that sometimes reproduce articles whole, and companies that sell packaged news feeds.”
While this new policy applies to organizations whose work is distributed by the AP, it will focus on developing a system to help revive the ailing newspaper industry and implement a system for shared revenue between newspapers and sources that are repurposing news articles. Up until now, news aggregators and search engine companies safely repurposed headlines and portions of news articles under the legal doctrine of fair use.
The AP continues to work out the logistics of the new policy, including how to limit use of articles and how to share revenue, AP Senior Vice President Sue A. Cross said the goal of this new policy isn’t to work against aggregators – it’s to “tackle bigger economic issues at stake.”
As the economy and changing media landscape continue to impact the newspaper industry, the prospect of gaining revenue from search engines such as Yahoo! and Google is tempting for many news organizations. Yet some executives at these organizations argue that this policy is “misguided” and state that much of their own Web traffic is generated through links on search pages. Others argue that although they appreciate the Web traffic generated through search engines, they believe they should receive some of the profits from these sites such as Google News, which rakes in profit from the reposted content by selling ads on the site.
I expect this debate will continue as news organizations search for ways to stay afloat. Eric E. Schmidt, Google’s chief executive, predicts the newspaper industry will eventually resemble television, “where some content was free, some was purchased by subscription and some was paid for every time it was viewed.”
Do you think Web sites and search engines should share revenue with news organizations when they repost the headlines and pieces of articles? We would love to hear your thoughts! E-mail us at [email protected].