headless chickens
The thing that AP and its chums have failed to realise is that their industry is dead - it just hasn't stopped running around yet. Rather than spending their diminishing resources on fighting legal battles that are, in terms of their long-term effectiveness, irrelevant to the overwhelming majority of internet users, they should be developing a strategy that assumes the internet *will* be (if it isn't already) the dominant medium for news dissemination. The job of the directors, editors and leaders in the field is to protect the shareholders' investments and transition the obsolete practices, mechanisms and legal position into this medium. If they don't manage it, they'll just get steamrollered. Firing off lawsuits won't stop it, though it might just prolong the agony and deplete their finances and really piss-off their prospective customers.
One thing we learned from The Alamo is that sheer weight of numbers is bloody hard to beat. So given that we have a handful of news, music and media organisations hunkered down and fending off technological threats. On the other hand we have half a billion bloggers, users and surfers who don't give a stuff about copyright and intellectual property (especially when it''s all in a foreign country). My money's on the horde!
Biting the hand that feeds IT
