AP, News Corp bosses tell search engines to pay up

The comments from Tom Curley of The Associated Press and News Corp.'s Rupert Murdoch come as the media industry struggles in the Internet age. Many news companies contend that sites such as Google have reaped a fortune from their articles, photos and video without fairly compensating the news organizations producing the material.

"We content creators have been too slow to react to the free exploitation of news by third parties without input or permission," Curley, the AP's chief executive, told a meeting of 300 media leaders in Beijing.

AP Sets Up News Registry To Track And Protect Content Online

PaidContent.org has an item about AP's plan to track its content online.

Following up on its spring promise of an industry initiative to protect news content online, the Associated Press board today approved an ambitious plan to tag and track every piece of text content for the co-op and its members—and eventually photos and video. The news registry will start by tracking AP content and is expected to add AP member content in early 2010. AP will fund it through 2010; it’s then expected to be self sustaining. One feature of the registry, which is being designed to work on payment models ranging from free to pay walls, is a “beacon” that will let the AP know how the content is being used.

Shepard Fairey Ripped Off My Picture First

Filmmaker and journalist Ed Nachtrieb posted a piece on Salon's user-generated site, Open Salon, about how artist Shepard Fairy appropriated a picture of Nachtrieb's to create a piece of art. As many of us already know, Fairy is the artist behind the famous Barack Obama "Hope" poster that was based on a photo of Obama taken by the Associated Press. Nachtrieb's photo is of an armed Chinese soldier at the onset of martial law in Beijing 20 years ago. Nachtrieb doesn't address the fair use issue that Fairy is claiming against the AP's lawsuit, but Nachtrieb does say he'd like Fairy to at least credit where he gets the photos used to inspire his art.