The experiment also provided a reminder of a couple basic lessons for any wire service—live or real-time still matters and context—an effort to make sense of the cluttered news world—is what many news consumers seek.

President Li and others will recognize that the efforts to build traffic and relevance with customers cover only part of the game—the offensive part. Defense is just as necessary to win. And we content creators have been too slow to react to free exploitation of news content by third parties without input or permission.

Random distribution of traffic by aggregators such as search engines directs audience and revenue away from those who invest in original news reports but assures the aggregators and their ad networks of a stream of revenue based on aggregation and indexing of published news content.

Crowd-sourcing Web services such as Wikipedia, YouTube and Facebook have become preferred consumer destinations for breaking news, displacing Web sites of traditional news publishers.

To turn the tide, AP is creating a News Registry—a rights management and tracking system.

Participation in the News Registry would discourage unauthorized exploitation of news content by third parties, and promote uses that benefit participating news publishers. Implementation of digital protocols that convey rules pertaining to access and use of published news content would enable publishers to pursue individual and collective licensing opportunities.

We also intend to create a new set of products and distribution opportunities across various digital customer segments to improve the value of news content overall.

AP's members have agreed to participate in a NewsMap or a constantly updated index of original news content submitted to the News Registry to steer aggregator traffic, including from search engines, to the Web sites of participating publishers, benefiting the publishers in terms of audience and revenue terms.

Finally, AP is creating a NewsGuide or an aggregated body of unique news content, curated by news editors. The NewsGuide would enable news publishers together to create a preferred Web destination for consumers of breaking news, which also would serve as a conduit to related content displayed on the publisher Web sites.

We call this effort AP3P or Protect, Point and Pay. Step one is to protect published news content against unauthorized exploitation. Step two is to aggregate and index published news content so that aggregators can better point their users to the published content. Step three is to enable new content licensing models for use of the published content with support for payment models that individual publishers may adopt.

AP would manage these activities under a governance structure that complies with applicable antitrust and competition laws.

The strength of AP3P lies in its news registry-based governance structure, its core principles of mutual cooperation and benefit, and the new content licensing models that it can enable in the marketplace.

The News Registry will use a common taxonomy and format around intellectual property rights and licensing rules. It will reflect common understanding around the aggregation and indexing of published news content and will enable participating publishers to share mutually in new licensing opportunities whether based on subscriptions or advertising.

Going forward, AP will license only those who agree to the principles of Protect, Point and Pay.

We will no longer tolerate the disconnect between the people who devote themselves—at great human and economic cost—to gathering the news of public interest and those who profit from it without supporting it.

The public must have broad access to the news, and digital distribution can enhance that access. That distribution must occur in such a way that it supports newsgathering in the public interest—for those engaged in the resource-intensive work of reporting on government actions to those who risk their lives covering global conflicts, and to all the news coverage that has the potential to help people improve their lives.

Basketball painted a line on the court. We content providers must understand the changing game of distribution and make a mark to support the future of news-gathering that serves the public interest.

Source: www.chinaview.cn/wms2009