No AP Stories
Posted on June 16, 2008 Comments (0)
Michael Arrington, at Techcrunch, has announced a new policy Here’s Our New Policy On A.P. stories: They’re Banned. Good for him. I have long not linked to Associated Press stories due to their pointy haired boss understanding of the internet. The New York Times took awhile to understand how to respond to the new world but seems to be doing well now (so now I link to them). Other good sources: BBC (though they need to do better with webcasting), NPR, National Geographic, Science Blogs, PLoS.
Getting links is a good thing. When you have lawyers threatening people that are helping you, that is just plain dumb (and not the behavior I want to support by directing traffic to your site). Yes some bloggers do go to far and appropriate content they should not. So fine, do something about that. But you need to act sensibly, not like they have been (and that is not just limited to the problems that have landed them in trouble recently but their lack of making effective use of the internet for years).
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.
Related: When Fair Use Isn’t Fair – Programmable New York Times On the Way – More Dinosaurs Fighting Against Open Science – What is Wrong with Copyright Taking Public Good for Private Special Interests – Science Journal Publishers Stay Stupid
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