Associated Press, who?

The A.P. doesn’t get to make it’s own rule around how its content is used, if those rules are stricter than the law allows. So even thought they say they are making these new guidelines in the spirit of cooperation, it’s clear that, like the RIAA and MPAA, they are trying to claw their way to a set of legal property rights that don’t exist today. And like the RIAA and MPAA, this is done to protect a dying business model – paid content.

So here’s our new policy on A.P. stories: they don’t exist. We don’t see them, we don’t quote them, we don’t link to them. They’re banned until they abandon this new strategy, and I encourage others to do the same until they back down from these ridiculous attempts to stop the spread of information around the Internet.

(Via RSSmeme | Stories Published 24 Hours Ago With At Least 20 Shares.)

I agree with TechCrunch. This land-grabbing approach to content that is starting to become more popular with major content producers is both out of touch with the way people consume content on the Web and goes further than copyright does to protect the content to the point of being nasty about it.

Associated Press, who?

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