WSJ Editor, Robert Thomson to Jeff Foxworthy: "You're welcome" in response to all the new material he just got based on the dumb-ass comments about coming after all the denizens of the Internets for "stealing" their content.
Seriously dude, you're (on behalf of the AP) trying to be the RIAA to our Napster and you sir, are no RIAA. That's how bad it is.
Thomson was referencing an AP move to come after those who "misappropriate" their content under "misguided legal theories", but in doing so AP Chairman Dean Singleton comes over like a spoiled little baby squealing something to the effect of "my Dad will beat up your Dad" with your comments about "build(ing) search-engine-friendly subject pages filled with recent, "authoritative" links, hoping searchers will see those pages above blogs and aggregators."
Both Thomson and Singleton demonstrate an acute lack of understanding in terms of how social media, consumer generated content, citizen journalism, blogging and search works. I could go on.
By all means, the AP and their related sites should invest aggressively in smarter search and conversationally-enabled functional sites, but they equally need to invest in a crash course in terms of understanding how distributed content, social networking, linking and reach activators like Twitter works.
Whilst I agree with them that reprinting or syndicating entire articles verbatim and/or aggregating this on some scaled basis, esp. with a view towards monetizing this content, should be dealt with...it's also important to recognize that this isn't always done maliciously/intentionally and to that end, slapping Google Adsense on a page isn't exactly the work of an evil genius and megalomanic with delusions of grandeur.
On the flipside, people who extend, riff, offer commentary or build on top of ideas, points of view, news articles (like I'm doing right now) and offer a combination of both link-love and attribution, with a reasonable/measured/considered amount of italicized quotes to boot are not the enemy. They are you and they are me and they are NOT going away.
To end, a bit of advice for the AP and NAA: if you can't beat 'em, join 'em is a not a bad policy to follow, however you're not going to achieve your goals with blunt-force brawn and legal bullying. Stop crying over spilt milk in the form of the realization that bloggers like myself and favored by the likes of Google over your sites and instead focus on building better hubs that reward conversation, distribution, linking, commenting and social/peer-to-peer interaction.
One more thing, let's build up a repoitre for Jeff: "XXXXXXX, then you might be a parasite or tech tapeworm in the intestines of the Internets"
