Ed Felton on the Associated Press announcement last week that it would be developing some kind of online news registry to control use of news content:
It was hard to make sense of this, so I went looking for more information. AP posted a diagram of the system, which only adds to the confusion — your satisfaction with the diagram will be inversely proportional to your knowledge of the technology.
As far as I can tell, the underlying technology is based on hNews, a microformat for news, shown in the AP diagram, that was announced by AP and the Media Standards Trust two weeks before the recent AP announcement.
Unfortunately for AP, the hNews spec bears little resemblance to AP’s claims about it. […]
It seems that there is much less to the AP’s announcement than meets the eye. If there’s a story here, it’s in the mismatch between the modest and reasonable underlying technology, and AP’s grandiose claims for it.
Funny stuff, what AP really meant to convey.
LATER: Techdirt points to the Futurist blog argument that the AP has no place on the Internet to wonder Is The AP Even Relevant Any More?
Could there be a place for a modern Associated Press? Absolutely. But its core purpose needs to be entirely different from what it’s been for most of the AP’s history. Each newspaper doesn’t need to copy the same report from the White House briefing room. Everyone can just link to different reports (including more than just one to give multiple perspectives). The whole reason for the AP’s very charter makes little sense these days, and it’s time for the AP to come to terms with that, and adapt… or go away.