How (and why) to replace the AP
The Associated Press is becoming the enemy of the internet because it is fighting the link and the link is the basis of the internet. From Richard Perez-Pena's New York Times story today: … Them's fightin' words: quoting an article's headline while linking to it would require licensing?
Context & Ripple Effects
This lands thirteen months after the AP's first clash with the blogosphere, when the cooperative moved to set guidelines for bloggers quoting its stories and drew a pointed rebuttal from Digg's Jay Adelson. Jeff Jarvis's argument here escalates that arc from guidelines to replacement: he frames the AP as an institution at war with the link itself, citing Richard Perez-Pena's New York Times report that quoting a headline while linking might require a license — a claim that remains unconfirmed, and which the AP has not settled either way.
The story travelled fast enough to split its own commentary: CJR ran 'Relax, Bloggers. The AP Isn't Out to Get You,' Scott Rosenberg called it 'A.P. goes nuclear on fair use,' and BNET asked bluntly whether the AP is run by idiots. The spread matters because it shows the fight is no longer just bloggers versus a cooperative — mainstream media critics are now taking positions on whether the AP's rights strategy is compatible with the web's linking economy.
First-order effects
- Bloggers and news sites that quote headlines while linking face a reported — though unconfirmed — licensing requirement, putting routine aggregation under legal ambiguity.
- The AP's own member newspapers are the immediate constituency: Jarvis's case is that members paying for the wire have cheaper, web-native alternatives if the cooperative keeps fighting the mechanism that distributes their work.
Second-order effects
- Publishers who already voice concern that aggregators take large pieces of their content gain a bargaining template: if excerpt-and-link licensing becomes enforceable, it becomes a lever against search engines and aggregators rather than just bloggers.
- Paywall experiments like the New York Times's rumored subscriber surveys on $2.50–$5 monthly web fees point members toward direct reader revenue, weakening the case for shared wire economics precisely when the AP is most contested.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, news distribution splits between cooperatives enforcing per-use rights and networks built on unlicensed linking — pressuring the AP's century-old membership model as members weigh whether the wire adds value or friction.
- The dispute also hardens into a legal-norms fight over fair use for short quotations and links, the terrain where any eventual resolution between publishers and platforms will be fought.
The trend: News organizations are shifting from cooperative, freely linked distribution toward enforced rights over quotations and links — a contest over the link economy that this AP episode crystallizes.