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The Associated Press has declared war on the Internet, or at least news aggregators, and I am torn. I want to side with the Associated Press -- I do work for a member news organization, after all -- but I also sympathize deeply with the people that AP is trying to shut down.

I do believe that AP has a right to defend it's own intellectual property. Their reporters went out and found, reported and produced that content and AP paid them good money, but not THAT good of money, to go and get those stories. AP has every right to the money that is made from that content. However, things are never that simple. There is a history of AP showing a lack of understanding toward the basic mechanics of the Internet -- calling simply linking to a story, an act central to the functioning of the Internet, a criminal act of piracy. 

My sympathies for the aggregators are few, but meaningful. Aggregators fall into two classes when it comes to other's content: the linkers and the thieves. If an aggregator simply links to an AP story, such as Digg does, then that aggregator is performing a service to AP, namely, distributing it's content to more users and directing them to the AP pages where they can then be served ads. These aggregators are terrific for the source of the original content because they drive up traffic on stories that might have otherwise been overlooked. The thieves are a different matter. These aggregators copy and paste the AP stories, even if they attribute them, without paying AP a royalty. This redirects the money that should have gone to AP into the thief's pocket. As a content originator I despise these sort of aggregators and see no reason why they should be defended.

The difficulty for AP will be, and has been, going after the thieves without alienating the average user who does not draw so stark a distinction as I have drawn here. 

The Internet is a vast echo-chamber and AP is making a lot of very loud people very nervous.

Note to classmates:

I am sorry this post did not get up sooner so that you could make your required comments. I spent the weekend with family in Wichita and just checked my email half an hour ago. My apologies. 

Arguments surrounding the Fairness Doctrine has flared up again in the months since President Obama was inaugurated. Much of the conflict stems from liberal voices wishing to complicate the positions of conservative talk radio hosts, Rush Limbaugh in particular. A reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine or any rule that bears a resemblance to it would only serve to weaken the public's already shaky faith in the media as a whole and could have serious repercussions for news organizations that use the airwaves.

First, a little background. The Fairness Doctrine was an Federal Communications Commission policy that required groups using the airwaves to have "fair" coverage of political stories. Both liberal and conservative voices had to be present and presented in a way that the FCC deemed fair. The Fairness Doctrine was thrown out in 1987.

A major part of the reason that the Fairness Doctrine was repealed was because there were so many media owners at the time that it seemed unreasonable to limit the free speech of owners just to guarantee a public right that did not seem threatened. Since that time the number of media owners has shrunk to a few corporations which own a huge number of radio stations. They would not have been allowed to own so many in 1987.

Because of this change in ownership combined with the prevalence of conservative voices on the AM frequencies some in congress are calling for the return of the Fairness Doctrine.

As yet, no legislation has been proposed in this congress to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine. However, much has been made of the fight on newspaper editorial pages and talk shows.

The Boston Globe ran this editorial, Politics and the Fairness Doctrine, on March 9. In the op-ed Robert Zelnick, a professor of journalism, argued that technology has changed so much since the Fairness Doctrine was first implemented that it was not necessary to bring it back and that the threat of its return was merely a political ploy to harass broadcasters whose coverage did not match their representative's wishes.

I must agree with that sentiment.

There is no gap in fairness that an FCC rule could fix. There are more conservative voices on the radio because the radio audience is more conservative. For this same reason there are more liberal voices on the Internet. It would be completely unreasonable, as well as constitutionally questionable, to create a new Fairness Doctrine to govern the limited resource of the airwaves when there are fewer people wanting to use that resource.

The recent calls are more about saber rattling and less about fairness.

The economy is serving to solve this problem anyway. The large radio corporations that so worry congressional Democrats are facing a horrible future where they must sell of their stations but cannot find buyers willing to purchase them. The market is already solving the media ownership part of the equation, if that same market decides that conservative voices will dominate the radio because they are the ones that make money, I have a hard time saying that that is a bad thing.

The lack of regulation created a bit of a mess through the '90s and that same lack of regulation is cleaning it up. Funny how the market works sometimes.

Google has made perhaps its first major revision to the Youtube formula since purchasing the video giant in October of 2006 for $1.65 billion. Taking a note from the iTunes playbook, users can now download select Youtube videos permanently, for a small fee that normally runs at $1.

Since it purchased Youtube, Google has tried to make it profitable. Even understanding Google's huge operating capital, Youtube did not come cheap and they will eventually have to earn all that money back. The paid download model may be a good way to go about doing that.

If Google can position itself as the iTunes of funny videos of cats riding Roombas then it might have a chance make good on its multi-billion dollar investment. The main problem for Google will be that all of the content it is offering for download is already offered in the same location for free. Unlike iTunes, who offers only a sample of the song, Youtube allows a user to see the entire video and then choose whether or not to pay to download it.

The problem is that, given the option to pay or get something for free, people will and should opt to get that something for free.

Why will people download their favorite video of a truck destroying a bank ATM when it is always available online for free? Google had best stick to advertising, because I don't see people paying for downloads.