Associated Press Buys Snake Oil: DRM for News
(crossposted from CreativeFreedom.org.nz)
Associated Press made waves last year with it’s plan to charge $12.50 for 5-25 word quotes from news articles. Now more details about AP’s plans for the web have emerged and it looks like they’re foolishly heading down the route of Digital Restrictions Management 
. DRM imposes arbitrary restrictions and bypassing DRM is a criminal offense in New Zealand. Not only does DRM fail at its task for fundamental reasons but – like all snake oil – those selling it mislead naive people about its effectiveness. Associated Press have a clear misunderstanding about the technology they’ve chosen (it can’t do what the diagram says) and Arstechnica comments that “You’ll be forgiven if you find it difficult to square the reality of [the technology] with the AP’s pronouncements about it.” and “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”. Unfortunately this large organisation may soon push for law changes in New Zealand as it has in other nations.
Earlier this year Scoop had a press release from the World Association of Newspapers about ACAP , the Automated Content Access Protocol which is a DRM-scheme for newspapers.
ACAP builds upon an existing technique while also defining the amount of text that can be quoted, whether to quote or display the entire site in a scrollable box, and even what colour and font to display quotes in (!).
DRM removes legitimate access to copyrighted material that would be allowable under New Zealand’s Fair Dealing provisions, and Arstechnica comments that if AP believe that “hNews” or any technology can do half of the things they believe they’re sadly mistaken. Artstechnica comment,
hNews looks like a nice way to mark up news, to make it visible to search engines, and to provide useful metadata for those who want to do interesting things with the content. But what it has to do with “wrappers,” “enforcement,” and “protection” is unclear. Reading the AP announcement and the graphic that accompanied it, one is struck by the thought that perhaps the AP has been snookered into believing that it’s getting “DRM for news,” when in reality it’s simply using an open-source news metadata markup language with Creative Commons rights expression.
Down the road, of course, the AP might go to Congress and ask that whatever tracking and rights system it settles on be given the force of law. It’s not as crazy as it sounds; European publishers already hope to get a law enforcing the Automated Content Access Protocol.
Holland recently decided to tax internet connections to help newspapers and it’s likely that this debate will soon come to New Zealand.
