Can Associated Press control the blogosphere

MSNBC ^ | June. 17, 2008 | By Helen A.S. Popkin

[Jim Robinson]

Face it, blogs exist so we don't have to read the news for comprehension

The Associated Press took a grandiose Facebook-style faceplant last week when it attempted to impose strict guidelines on the blogosphere.

Now, just like Facebook’s initial unapologetic enthusiasm for its privacy-violating Beacon program followed by Facebook’s effusive apology for its privacy-violating Beacon program, the AP is bowing to the will of the angry Internet masses and backing off. Sort of.

As part of the big mea culpa, the AP's Jim Kennedy pledged to meet this week with Robert Cox, president of the Media Bloggers Association (which is, you know, kind of like meeting with the United Organization of Anarchists), and work up some sort of AP/Blogger Accord.

So mark the date kids, this is yet another moment in Internet history we’ll someday look back on in Wikipedia when we scratch our heads and try and figure out how cyber rights and responsibilities got to wherever this whole World Wide Web thing is going.

It all started with a letter from AP (a national news organization that pays the rent by selling news reports to other media, including msnbc.com) to the Drudge Retort (a news aggregator site named in parody for the muckraking site, Drudge Report). AP requested that the Drudge Retort remove seven posts featuring quotes from AP stories. From there, it blew up into yet another full-on Internet conflict between Big Business and the Little Guys.

[zeugma]

Well, that too. Either one works in a linguistic sense. ;-)

[twntaipan]

How can anyone possibly damage AP’s bad reputation? ;-)