AP and News Corp Want Search Engines to Pay for News Content
Posted 10/09/09 at 03:20:23 PM by Bart Salisbury

The free lunch of information on the Internet is about to end, if The Associated Press (AP) and Rupert Murdoch’s News Crop. have their way. Murdoch threw down the gauntlet during his opening address at the World Media Summit in Bejing, stating “the aggregators and plagiarists will soon have to pay a price for the co-opting of our content.”
The issue, for Curly and Murdoch, is the use of their content in search engines, by aggregators, and by bloggers. For too long, according to Tom Curley, chief executive of the AP, have the likes of Wikipedia, YouTube, and Facebook gotten a free ride on the backs of the “people who devote themselves--at great human and economic cost--to gather news of public interest.” It’s now time to pay up.
The AP’s position is logical given its present financial situation, and the shifting nature of advertising on the Internet. The AP saw a decrease of revenues, from $748 million in 2008 to $700 in 2009, in part due to a shifting away from traditional news sources. Murdoch, on the other hand, is just being Murdoch, advancing his long held views that news content, regardless of how provided, should be paid for. The Murdoch owned Wall Street Journal online already requires a subscription, and Murdoch is exploring similar options for his other holdings, including The New York Post and The London Times.
If the AP and News Corp. are successful, other news providers are certain to follow. This could be bad news for bloggers, many of who consolidate and interpret breaking information from a variety of sources to keep their readers informed. It would also serve to suppress the relatively free-flow of information the Internet now experiences.
Image Credit: AP, News Corp.
My guesss is search ends
Submitted by DoubleR on Sun, 10/11/2009 - 1:14pm
My guess is search providers could then block out their suites in
search results and then people will not be able to search and find a
reason to go their site. Their traffic will go down?? At the same
time they have made it known that they want to charge to
go their site period. The haircut analogy does not work here. The
barber
raise the price to deliberately decrease patrons and not have to work
as hard to make the same
money or more. The bet is most will not find or go to cheaper barber
because they just don't want to change or do not go shop around.
That's not how the internet works.
So they want people to pay
Submitted by gendoikari1 on Fri, 10/09/2009 - 10:16pm
So they want people to pay for slower, inaccurate (which is a corruption of "Ell Oh Ell") news when they can get it now for free? They deserve to be banhammer'd for their insolence.
Yippy.
Submitted by Zazubovich on Fri, 10/09/2009 - 5:06pm
Both are right biased propaganda outlets. Their profit model with a paid subscription would better put them both with their on-line only peers like NewsMax and Alex Jones' online presence.
Newspapers are likewise dunzo unless they realize that the quality of the information, the utility of the information, and the value of the information to users is now more important than their authority by virtue of the fact that they are journalists at a brick and mortar newspaper. NYT found out about subscription models. Murdoch, you still crazy!
What does this have to do
Submitted by comptech08 on Fri, 10/09/2009 - 2:36pm
What does this have to do with search engines? For the most part search engines give you results on what you searched for. The content of those queries are on other websites. Not the search engines website.
I have a hard time paying for news. I guess you could blame it on the internet. But i thank the internet, because paying to hear or read what is going on in our world is stupid.
So old fashioned.
Submitted by ferds7 on Fri, 10/09/2009 - 2:32pm
So old fashioned. Information from both those groups is just about as accurate as it is off Twitter anyways. If they go subscription based they'll fail miserably. They both are just unable to adapt with the changing times and everyone knows what happens to those that don't adapt, they become extinct. It's nature. To bad, so long, you won't be missed or remembered.
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