So much of the Internet commentary about the radical interpretation of copyright law being asserted by The Associated Press has made a critical error: They are saying the entire organization is obsolete, not just its plan to limit the fair use of its articles. The A.P., some say, is an irrelevant middleman trying to control intellectual property in the age of networked open information, just like record labels.I’d like to argue the reverse is true. For more than a century The Associated Press has been the apotheosis of the reuse and remix principles that drove the Web 2.0 movement. The A.P. has been an essential ingredient in the success of many Web sites. Indeed, if it didn’t exist, I imagine a lot of Internet companies would want to create a news-gathering cooperative of their own. What would be different is that a news association created today should be owned by all users of the information, not just newspapers as The A.P. is.
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/09/the-ap-was-the-first-web-20-company/
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