AP's Attempt At DRM'ing The News Shuts Down

Tech Dirt ^ | May 17th 2013 | Mike Masnick

[Salman]

Plenty of people rightly mocked the news a few years ago that the Associated Press was working on a plan to "DRM the news." The idea was to put some sort of licensing mechanism together to get news aggregators to pay to promote their news. This seemed incredibly dumb for a whole host of reasons. It added no value. Its only purpose was to limit the value for everyone in the system by putting a tollbooth where none needed to exist. When it finally launched last year to great fanfare in the newspaper world, under the name "NewsRight," we pointed out that, once again, it made no sense. Basically, the whole focus appeared to be on getting bloggers and aggregators to pay for a license they legally did not need.

Since the launch... we heard absolutely nothing about NewsRight. There was a launch, with its newspaper backers claiming it was some huge moment for newspapers, and then nothing.

Well, until now, when we find out that NewsRight quietly shut down. Apparently, among its many problems, many of the big name news organization that owned NewsRight wouldn't even include their own works as part of the "license" because they feared cannibalizing revenue from other sources. So, take legacy companies that are backwards looking, combine it with a licensing scheme based on no legal right, a lack of any actual added value and (finally) mix in players who are scared of cannibalizing some cash cow... and it adds up to an easy failure.

[Salman]

From the first comment at the link:

The dinosaurs do not get the point of encouraging links to their content generates visits and eventually ad revenue.

[Repeal The 17th]

[sasquatch]

DRM... WTF??

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Salman.

The idea was to put some sort of licensing mechanism together to get news aggregators to pay to promote their news. This seemed incredibly dumb for a whole host of reasons. It added no value... Basically, the whole focus appeared to be on getting bloggers and aggregators to pay for a license they legally did not need... NewsRight quietly shut down. Apparently, among its many problems, many of the big name news organization that owned NewsRight wouldn't even include their own works as part of the "license" because they feared cannibalizing revenue from other sources.

Makes ya teary eyed, dun-it?

[AnotherUnixGeek]

DRM... WTF??

DRM being Digital Rights Management, usually referring to technologies by copyright holders to strictly control and protect their content when it's available in easily copied and transmitted digital form.