The Kicker — April 10, 2009 03:59 PM

AP Articulates Its Intellectual Property Initiative

By Megan Garber

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You call that articulated?

I'd say AP just obfuscated its new policies on intellectual property.

After reading through the entire FAQ, I have even less of an idea what AP's about to do, and I suspect AP doesn't have much of one either:

"The initiative will involve a variety of steps, including something we refer to as search pages, or a “news guide” that would help point consumers to sources of original reporting. It also will involve creation of rights-based services to help publishers and those who originate news to facilitate new distribution and revenue models."

The follow-up sections that attempt to clarify that astounding bit of Dilbert-speak make it even worse.

#1 Posted by Aaron, CJR on Fri 10 Apr 2009 at 07:20 PM

So what I get is that AP is all about demanding the changing of news search algorithms to downrate (or outright eliminate) competing news providers -- you know, those non-"authoritative" ones -- maybe like Reuters, AFP, and original content from the majors like NYT, in favor of THE "authoritative" news provider, Associated Press! It seems like they are wanting for AP content to always come up first on a news search?

Either that, or they are flailing wildly and landing air punches against imaginary straw men. What am I missing?

#2 Posted by Tom, CJR on Fri 10 Apr 2009 at 08:45 PM

Just to take an example of the AP's incompetence from the FAQ itself, item number five (I dare note quote) is flat out ridiculous. Why use the phrase rights-based which is in quotes to indicate that it does not mean what in plain English it would mean. And then the describe adding metadada tags that describe the content and aid in searching and browsing content. There could of course be rights based tagging such as XRML http://www.xrml.org/ but no such tags are not mentioned. Why? I don't know.

#3 Posted by TimothyWMurray, CJR on Sat 11 Apr 2009 at 03:06 AM

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