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.

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