Always ask if you can work dirty

by Brian McKim & Traci Skene on June 17th, 2008

A large, American-based news syndicator is reporting that Joan Rivers was asked to leave a live British television show during a commercial break. She used foul language (two words, we hear) while guest hosting what might possibly be the U.K. version of The View. Rivers assumed the censors would bleep her. She was wrong.

Which large, American-based syndicator? Uh… we’re afraid to tell you. They might come after us. Okay… you broke us… it’s Associated Press. We’re terrified because AP has decided that websites can’t excerpt AP articles without paying $2.50 per word. That’s right. $2.50 per word. Travis Hudson, writing in PC World said:

The AP’s decision to impose blog-use guidelines is shocking. It’s one thing to go after blogs that copy the entire length of an AP story without any linking or recognition, but it’s another to go after personal blogs that aren’t looking to profit from using AP content, or the professional news outlet blogs that generally provide proper acknowledgment and accompanying links. This doesn’t even consider social-news Web sites like Digg that commonly use excerpts from stories. Depending on how rigorous the AP guidelines are, this decision by the AP may stifle the current Web 2.0 trends of cross-linking and content-distribution, which is what makes blogs so great.

This, coupled with the ominous decisions by certain internet providers in test markets in Texas to start charging by the gig for downloads, could significantly alter the development of the WWW.

We’re convinced that the tiered service business model will doom all but a few sites that depend on video. One story on the subject said that watching one hour of video on Hulu.com would add up to a half a gig. That puts things in perspective. A 5-GB, 20 GB or 40 GB package would be gobbled up in no time. Extra charges kick in after the limit is reached.

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