Pat's got a really interesting column on Mediaite today about the AP's new policy with regard to blogs, search engines, etc linking to its content. According to this New York Times article, the AP is now saying that "even minimal use of a news article online require(s) a licensing agreement with the news organization that produced it."
Pat thinks this is going a bit too far, and I agree. I am all for journalists getting paid for their work, and I dislike copyright violations as much as the next guy. (Yes, I pay for all my music.) But when a blog links to an article and cites the source, it drives traffic to the Web site that produced the article, thereby driving up site traffic and enabling the site to use those boosted traffic figures to sell more ads. It's free advertising, basically.
When I used to write for a web site that sounds like See En En, our editors were ALL over us to get our articles picked up on blogs, for that precise reason. So I'm not really sure quite what the head of the Associated Press is thinking on this one.
In other NY1 news this morning, the weather segments this week are being sponsored by a show/play/godknowshowtodescribeit called "Puppetry of the Penis" (which I'm told is about what it sounds like - fully naked men bending their members into funny shapes). But what makes their sponsorship hilarious is that the station announcer has to say, "New York One's Weather on the Ones was brought to you by Puppetry of the [BLEEP]."
It just reminds me of that King of the Hill episode where Peggy Hill, substitute teacher extraordinare, has to teach sex ed because the health teacher mysteriously becomes ill when that chapter comes up in the text book. So in order to prepare herself and overcome her mortification, she stands in front of the mirror practicing to say "penis" by going, "HA-pi-ness. Ha-PI-ness. PI-ness." Anyway, hats off to the Puppetry of the Penis people (or would that be socks off?). It's a pretty good gimmick.
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