AP to go After Cutn'Pasters

The Associated Press has taken the first move, after 20 years of the internet, to protect its craptacular content online. It plans to create a news registry to tag and track all AP online content "to assure compliance with terms of use," according to an announcement following a board decision. Which means they're going to be running a plagiarism search on blogs and news aggregators.

"The system will register key identifying information about each piece of content that AP distributes as well as the terms of use of that content, and employ a built-in beacon to notify AP about how the content is used," it adds.

And then they'll probably send an angry cease and desist email - followed by RIAA-like trails looking to recoup some money. Good luck with that. We haven't sold one T-shirt and I think Blasphemes made a whopping .0001 cents last year because someone accidentally hit one of the Google Ad Sense banners while they were trying to get off the site.

In blogging terms, they'll be looking for cut'npaste articles. I wonder if they offer a discount for snarky remarks and attempts at witticism? Unlikely.

"What we are building here is a way for good journalism to survive and thrive," Dean Singleton, chairman of the AP Board of Directors and vice chairman and CEO of MediaNews Group Inc, said in a statement. "The AP news registry will allow our industry to protect its content online, and will assure that we can continue to provide original, independent and authoritative journalism at a time when the world needs it more than ever."

Good journalism from the AP?! Pass what you're smokin', sir. I have not YET come across original, independent or authoritative review of ANY of Obama's policies and bills - including the Stimulus Package and the Health 'Insurance' Reform packages. How about discussing the two wars we're waging? How about --what? They're out there? Oh, they're underneath 18 hundred tons of Michael Jackson still being dead and we went to the Moon 40 years ago. You know what, AP - maybe it's time you stepped up your game to give us something worth while to steal - then we'll have a discussion about whether it's worth paying for.

And the news you do crank out is so biased and one sided - and usually so not 'news' that there are entire sites built around how idiotic you are - see Newsbusters and Fark for the two top examples.

And for the record - the little widget on the side of Blasphemes is posting AP headlines from Yahoo. Take a page from the RIAA's public relations successes. I suggest you take up your issue with the big boys first before trying to go after bloggers.