DRM for news? Inside the AP's plan to "wrap" its content(arstechnica.com)
arstechnica.com
DRM for news? Inside the AP's plan to "wrap" its content
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/07/drm-for-news-inside-the-aps-plan-to-wrap-its-content.ars
6 comments
The plan is that they have no plan. The plan is to make a bunch of aging executives look foolish after buying the snake oil off the back of some consultant's cart of tricks. It betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the web, its culture, and its infrastructure, and is utterly doomed to fail.
They'll kill themselves. After a week or two they'll recant, a lot of $ poorer and some experience richer.
This is actually quite comparable to Ted Nelsons' project Xanadu (or at least parts of it).
This is actually quite comparable to Ted Nelsons' project Xanadu (or at least parts of it).
Do you think that Xanadu could reasonably solve this problem?
Xanadu was ahead of its time in many ways, but the reason why the web took off the way it did I think has to do with the free and open nature of it.
The basic idea behind xanadu was that information could be re-cited as often as you wanted but the originator would get a slice of the cake.
The web is the opposite, it's a total free-for-all with the spammers and the parasites being on the same level as the originators of the content. Nelson saw it differently.
Early attempts at something like the web in Europe (minitel in France and videotext in the netherlands and germany) tried to charge 'by the page' for the content, but this seriously limited the amount of information available. Information providers could set a price on their information and the 'links' would display the price prior to activation. Billing was done through the telco.
If every web link came with a price attached I think it would have never gotten off the ground the way it did. Still, there are some good elements in that philosophy and I'm sure that in the long run 'for pay' links and some kind of citation mechanism will find their way back in to the web, simply because they are useful and because there is much demand for it (from the content providers side).
One potential way to realize this today is by setting up a gateway that deals with pay-per-view content where information providers could host their data and a plug-in based viewer (flash or something like it) that unlocks the content if the client has enough credits and confirms they want to see it.
I hope all of this makes sense :)
The basic idea behind xanadu was that information could be re-cited as often as you wanted but the originator would get a slice of the cake.
The web is the opposite, it's a total free-for-all with the spammers and the parasites being on the same level as the originators of the content. Nelson saw it differently.
Early attempts at something like the web in Europe (minitel in France and videotext in the netherlands and germany) tried to charge 'by the page' for the content, but this seriously limited the amount of information available. Information providers could set a price on their information and the 'links' would display the price prior to activation. Billing was done through the telco.
If every web link came with a price attached I think it would have never gotten off the ground the way it did. Still, there are some good elements in that philosophy and I'm sure that in the long run 'for pay' links and some kind of citation mechanism will find their way back in to the web, simply because they are useful and because there is much demand for it (from the content providers side).
One potential way to realize this today is by setting up a gateway that deals with pay-per-view content where information providers could host their data and a plug-in based viewer (flash or something like it) that unlocks the content if the client has enough credits and confirms they want to see it.
I hope all of this makes sense :)
Makes lots of sense.
So does it seem that Xanadu would solve what AP is trying to do?
So does it seem that Xanadu would solve what AP is trying to do?
It would have, but as far as I'm concerned Xanadu, as visionary as it was turned out to be an evolutionary dead end.
This is not to be disrespectful to Ted Nelson, it's just that the good bits are going to be recylced even if the grand vision won't be.
Some elements from Xanadu would solve the problems the AP is trying to address but I highly doubt that it would be commercially feasible without some kind of collusion between all the news providers. After all, as long as one of them stays free that one will end up with all the customers in their basket.
It's a free market, and the market deals harshly with those that try to sell lemons while the neighbours find a way to give them away and still make a profit.
This is not to be disrespectful to Ted Nelson, it's just that the good bits are going to be recylced even if the grand vision won't be.
Some elements from Xanadu would solve the problems the AP is trying to address but I highly doubt that it would be commercially feasible without some kind of collusion between all the news providers. After all, as long as one of them stays free that one will end up with all the customers in their basket.
It's a free market, and the market deals harshly with those that try to sell lemons while the neighbours find a way to give them away and still make a profit.
I am pleased to see another organization adopting a 'standard' microformat, in this case, hNews.
Microformats are the bridge by which we're going to get to the truly Semantic Web.
Microformats are the bridge by which we're going to get to the truly Semantic Web.
Yes, this is less absurd than I thought it was going to be; it's basically a polite watermark. My guess is that they'll ignore micro-users like mini-bloggers but throw the book at any volume sites that strip the 'DRM' and recycle the content without attribution.
I think rumors of AP's suicide/death are rather overblown, and they're just looking for a way to share without giving away the farm. Of course, they might have done better to use something like a creative commons license and choose terms that would encapsulate their legitimate commercial interest. On the other hand there's no ML standard for CC licensing that I know of.
I think rumors of AP's suicide/death are rather overblown, and they're just looking for a way to share without giving away the farm. Of course, they might have done better to use something like a creative commons license and choose terms that would encapsulate their legitimate commercial interest. On the other hand there's no ML standard for CC licensing that I know of.
"[C]ontent providers have the right to decide what happens to their content and on what terms".
-- Gavin O'Reilly, Chairman, Automated Content Access Protocol
If you don't want people using the content you created, you shouldn't be in the content creation business.
-- Gavin O'Reilly, Chairman, Automated Content Access Protocol
If you don't want people using the content you created, you shouldn't be in the content creation business.
I've heard this statement before in many different incarnations some with intonations of piracy, some without. However they all fail to see the basis of where the other party is coming from. They want to be adequately rewarded for you using their content. However adequately differs very much from person to person, you may think that a news story costs a quarter to read, I may think it costs 15 cents, the CEO of AP may think it costs a buck fifty, and the 13 year old down the street thinks AP should pay him to read the news story.
The problem that news companies suffer that makes this a significantly different problem for them rather than a company like the RIAA is that journalists get paid by the company as a primary source of income, journalists have to get sent places which costs the company money, and the company's primary source of revenue is the output of the journalists. For a second lets forget print media ever existed, in the current state of the web where media such as this is demanded by users to be free this is a failing business because of extravagant costs, and almost no profits. Why print media is a failing is because less people buy print and more people read it online.
There are players who beat the market by having a niche audience, low costs, and a high price, ie the Economist. Unlike the NY Times or AP they didn't have to send several photographers and journalists to China several times for pre, during, and post Olympics. While I don't necessarily agree with this business model, an exchange of cash has to exist somewhere, finding where such an exchange is most acceptable is a another story.
The problem that news companies suffer that makes this a significantly different problem for them rather than a company like the RIAA is that journalists get paid by the company as a primary source of income, journalists have to get sent places which costs the company money, and the company's primary source of revenue is the output of the journalists. For a second lets forget print media ever existed, in the current state of the web where media such as this is demanded by users to be free this is a failing business because of extravagant costs, and almost no profits. Why print media is a failing is because less people buy print and more people read it online.
There are players who beat the market by having a niche audience, low costs, and a high price, ie the Economist. Unlike the NY Times or AP they didn't have to send several photographers and journalists to China several times for pre, during, and post Olympics. While I don't necessarily agree with this business model, an exchange of cash has to exist somewhere, finding where such an exchange is most acceptable is a another story.
Market value comes from scarcity. When you need a million dollar press to print a newspaper, you can charge for it because the capital cost is a big barrier to the entry of competitors.
When the cost of printing collapses (to use the expression from Clay Shirky), the barrier to entry disappears, and the value derived from scarcity disappears with it.
AP's scheme amounts to a technical and/or legal attempt to reimpose an artificial scarcity so it can once again sell at a premium.
Their scheme is doomed.
When the cost of printing collapses (to use the expression from Clay Shirky), the barrier to entry disappears, and the value derived from scarcity disappears with it.
AP's scheme amounts to a technical and/or legal attempt to reimpose an artificial scarcity so it can once again sell at a premium.
Their scheme is doomed.
I disagree, I still believe that the revenue streams are incompatible (due to culture, web users don't want to pay) or insufficient (such as ads) for a news agency to operate. What needs to happen is for someone to suggest a web culture compatible revenue stream that is sufficient to quench the financial need of a news agencies operations. This is lame attempt to do so, i.e. an iTunes for news segments. But at the end of the things the main problem is that users still don't want to pay for these things.
the main problem is that users still don't want to pay for these things
That's only a problem if your business model depends on users paying for these things - i.e. if your business model depends on scarcity that doesn't exist.
If they would only stop being precious for a minute, the newsmedia would recognize that they're already familiar with the idea of making money from sources other than the actual content consumers. After all, it was newspapers that popularized the revenue-from-advertising model in the first place, a model that allowed them to deliver newspapers very cheaply (sometimes freely) to their readers.
The smartest thing AP and other newsmedia can do is abandon their micropayment pipe dreams and start getting creative about new ways to leverage their assets for revenue.
That's only a problem if your business model depends on users paying for these things - i.e. if your business model depends on scarcity that doesn't exist.
If they would only stop being precious for a minute, the newsmedia would recognize that they're already familiar with the idea of making money from sources other than the actual content consumers. After all, it was newspapers that popularized the revenue-from-advertising model in the first place, a model that allowed them to deliver newspapers very cheaply (sometimes freely) to their readers.
The smartest thing AP and other newsmedia can do is abandon their micropayment pipe dreams and start getting creative about new ways to leverage their assets for revenue.
The problem is that they have tried that. It doesn't work because web advertising is significantly cheaper than print advertising is, especially because you cannot guarantee that someone has seen the advert on the web. Which is why they're currently losing money. A full page ad in the NY times on the cover is 75,000$ or 100,000$ depending on the day, one could only dream of making that kind of money on web adverts.
http://www.nypost.com/seven/01062009/business/front_page_new...
http://www.nypost.com/seven/01062009/business/front_page_new...
The trick is to get creative about finding new sources of value in their assets. Maybe the answer isn't merely more advertising, but finding new revenue streams in addition to straight ad sales. Given that people flat-out won't pay for online news. the newsmedia have no other choice.
At this point you'd have to suggest a solution, because I cannot get what you're hinting at. If you can't my point original point is evident: the news agencies are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
I'm not actually hinting at anything. I simply don't know what the solution will look like. What I do know is that micropayments from readers do not work and will not work.
That means either:
1) the corporate newsmedia will come up with some new revenue stream by discovering or developing some new source of value from their assets, or
2) they will fail.
Look at Google. They started out as a search company. With no real idea how to generate revenue, they came up with a way to aggregate hyperlinks across websites to produce surprisingly helpful page results for keyword searches.
It was the gargantuan data set they managed to accumulate over the course of indexing the internet and generating search results that finally gave them the revenue stream they needed.
Google is now an advertising company. They generate revenue by selling contextual advertising embedded in web pages (they get website owners to agree to this advertising by sharing some of their revenue).
That's a profoundly creative way of leveraging assets to generate revenue by providing a scarce, valuable service: scarce because only Google has the infrastructure, data, analytical expertise and market reach to provide it; and valuable because advertisers gain more revenue from increased sales than it costs them to buy Google ads.
The newsmedia, until now, have been mainly in the advertising business, in which the exercise of gathering, reporting and distributing the news served as a mechanism for attracting advertising revenue (in much the same way that indexing the internet and providing search results is Google's mechanism for attracting advertising revenue).
The media were never particularly in the business of selling the news to their readers. Their customers were advertisers, not readers; and what they sold was not news but the eyeballs of their readers.
That business model is now dying. Some media firms - either existing firms that can change their stripes or some new firm that discovers and exploits an opportunity - will find a new business model in which they sell something scarce and valuable to someone willing to pay for it.
Again, those media firms that fail to do this will fail.
If you've got an hour or so, there's a really entertaining lecture by Cory Doctorow on the HN front page right now:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=734138
That means either:
1) the corporate newsmedia will come up with some new revenue stream by discovering or developing some new source of value from their assets, or
2) they will fail.
Look at Google. They started out as a search company. With no real idea how to generate revenue, they came up with a way to aggregate hyperlinks across websites to produce surprisingly helpful page results for keyword searches.
It was the gargantuan data set they managed to accumulate over the course of indexing the internet and generating search results that finally gave them the revenue stream they needed.
Google is now an advertising company. They generate revenue by selling contextual advertising embedded in web pages (they get website owners to agree to this advertising by sharing some of their revenue).
That's a profoundly creative way of leveraging assets to generate revenue by providing a scarce, valuable service: scarce because only Google has the infrastructure, data, analytical expertise and market reach to provide it; and valuable because advertisers gain more revenue from increased sales than it costs them to buy Google ads.
The newsmedia, until now, have been mainly in the advertising business, in which the exercise of gathering, reporting and distributing the news served as a mechanism for attracting advertising revenue (in much the same way that indexing the internet and providing search results is Google's mechanism for attracting advertising revenue).
The media were never particularly in the business of selling the news to their readers. Their customers were advertisers, not readers; and what they sold was not news but the eyeballs of their readers.
That business model is now dying. Some media firms - either existing firms that can change their stripes or some new firm that discovers and exploits an opportunity - will find a new business model in which they sell something scarce and valuable to someone willing to pay for it.
Again, those media firms that fail to do this will fail.
If you've got an hour or so, there's a really entertaining lecture by Cory Doctorow on the HN front page right now:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=734138
I'm stuck on the last bit of their target case:
What I'm talking about, and what has really riled up our internal copyright folks, are the bloggers who take, just paste an entire 800 word story into their blog. They don't even comment on it. And it happens way more than most people realize.
If people don't realize this is happening, how can it be a problem? If a blog without readers violates copyright, does it hurt the AP?
What I'm talking about, and what has really riled up our internal copyright folks, are the bloggers who take, just paste an entire 800 word story into their blog. They don't even comment on it. And it happens way more than most people realize.
If people don't realize this is happening, how can it be a problem? If a blog without readers violates copyright, does it hurt the AP?
I realize it's happening. I think what he means is that most people don't think about it much.
However, if you've used Google News for a long time after a while you notice that there's a lot of no-original-content websites masquerading as news outlets, not unlike the domain squatters with 'search result' pages for high-ranking searches. In my opinion it's a kind of black-hat SEO.
Try looking at a news story in GN and you'll see that the top story has maybe '5000 similar stories'. The first page or two will be related or fully rewritten stories, but if you go past the first 100 results you'll see a lot of junk websites that just host the top 20 news stories and monetize them with adwords. They may only make $10 a day that way, but it's diluting AP's brand a bit in the process.
However, if you've used Google News for a long time after a while you notice that there's a lot of no-original-content websites masquerading as news outlets, not unlike the domain squatters with 'search result' pages for high-ranking searches. In my opinion it's a kind of black-hat SEO.
Try looking at a news story in GN and you'll see that the top story has maybe '5000 similar stories'. The first page or two will be related or fully rewritten stories, but if you go past the first 100 results you'll see a lot of junk websites that just host the top 20 news stories and monetize them with adwords. They may only make $10 a day that way, but it's diluting AP's brand a bit in the process.
That's a great point. I don't use Google News, but I can definitely see brand dilution happening in that manner.