Music Industry Information

AP chair takes on new media

By MICHAEL CALDERONE

Associated Press chairman Dean Singleton kicked off the week by telling newspaper executives that the AP is “mad as hell”—but at whom, exactly, still remains unclear.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0409/21136.html



AP chairman Dean Singleton told newspaper executives that the AP is “mad as hell”—but at whom, exactly, remains unclear.

Regardless of the AP’s intent, Singleton's tough talk about those who "walk off with our work" fueled speculation that search engines (Google) or news aggregators (The Huffington Post) are now in the AP’s crosshairs. Singleton, talking of “misguided, unfounded legal theories,” even raised the possibility of litigation for those not following the rules.

Seagrave, a senior vice president for global product development, stressed that “what we’re really trying to do is work on ways to affirm the value of original reporting.” Already, the AP has challenged bloggers and remains embroiled in a lawsuit against artist Shepard Fairey for allegedly basing his iconic "Hope" image of Barack Obama on an AP photograph. Singleton signaled that the AP is ready to go further to prove that the world's oldest news organization won't be put out to pasture by the new media. But Seagrave stressed that while there is an enforcement aspect to the AP’s new initiative, it’s really “more affirmative than punitive.” The AP is working on methods to attach rights information to content as well as create new models for distribution and revenue, she said.

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Boston Globe fails to pick up Monster.com

http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2009/04/12/what_went_wrong/

Similar to Bill Gates & IBM?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Gates

IBM representative Jack Sams mentioned the licensing difficulties during a subsequent meeting with Gates and told him to get an acceptable operating system. A few weeks later Gates proposed using 86-DOS (QDOS), an operating system similar to CP/M that Tim Paterson of Seattle Computer Products (SCP) had made for hardware similar to the PC. Microsoft made a deal with SCP to become the exclusive licensing agent, and later the full owner, of 86-DOS. After adapting the operating system for the PC, Microsoft delivered it to IBM as PC-DOS in exchange for a one-time fee of $50,000. Gates did not offer to transfer the copyright on the operating system, because he believed that other hardware vendors would clone IBM's system.[31] They did, and the sales of MS-DOS made Microsoft a major player in the industry.[32]

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Isn't this sort of like Decca Records rejecting The Beatles