The Associated Press plans to go after news aggregators legally and through legislation (whatever that means) who ‘take’ AP headlines and related content.

Despite the obvious arguments of Fair Use and the fact that aggregators drive traffic to AP affiliated newspapers or even to the AP itself, AP Board Chairmen Dean Singleton sees it very differently. From a Wired blog article:

“We can no longer stand by and watch others walk off with our work under misguided legal theories,” AP Chairman Dean Singleton said at the AP annual meeting in San Diego.

Fair Use is, of course, not a misguided legal theory. It is intended to establish a balance between a copyright holder and the interests of the public. Among the greatest of all public interests is to keep it informed. What is misguided is AP’s knee-jerk approach to technology.

AP is upset by news aggregators who use their headlines and a possible excerpt of the first paragraph, as well as those who reproduce the articles in their entirety without permission or compensation. The former is intrinsic to the function of the web, the latter is clearly theft and copyright violation. The two are not equal.

The 600 pound gorilla in the room is clearly the failing newspaper business – AP’s main market. It’s failing not because people no longer want news, but because fewer people want news that is synchronized to a daily news cycle by virtue of it being printed on paper. This is the property of a 15th century technology, not a 21st Century one. People want news available anywhere, anytime and is constantly up to date, and the internet gives it to them.

Continued