Associated Press Plans to Pursue News Aggregation Sites

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on April 7, 2009 - 12:00pm.

Mountain View, Calif. - The Associated Press plans to aggressively pursue websites that feature its news content without the proper licenses, the organization's board announced on Monday. "We can no longer stand by and watch others walk off with our work under some very misguided, unfounded legal theories," AP chairman Dean Singleton said at the meeting, according to an AP story.

The AP did not specifically all any websites out for using its content without permission, although it has previously filed suit against news aggregation sites All Headline News and The Drudge Retort.

The AP also had a dispute with Google (NASD: GOOG) several years ago over its Google News aggregation service, but Google now pays to reprint AP articles and photographs.

In a blog post on Tuesday, Google associate general counsel Alexander Macgillivray defended the legality of Google News.

"In the U.S., the doctrine of fair use enshrined in the US Copyright Act allows us to show snippets and links," Macgillivray wrote.

"Even though the Copyright Act does not grant a copyright owner a veto over such uses, it is our policy to allow any rightsholder, in this case newspaper or wire service, to remove their content from our index -- all they have to do is ask us or implement simple technical standards."

http://snipurl.com/fg3c9 (AP)

http://blog.wired.com/business/2009/04/ap-to-aggregato.html

http://snipurl.com/fg2il (Google blog post)