The Associated Press (AP) have issued a cease and desist against an AP affiliate radio station over the station embedding official AP videos offered for embedding on YouTube.
AP said in its C&D to WTNQ-FM 104.9 in Lafollete, Tennessee that the videos breached AP’s copyright, and demanded that they be removed from the stations site. There’s two problems: the station is an AP affiliate and actually pays AP for access to the said content; second, the videos are offered on YouTube with embed codes and are free for anyone to use whether they are AP affiliates or not. YouTube allows content owners to disable embedding if they don’t want the content shared, AP itself had decided it wanted these videos shared.
If you thought AP’s attacks on websites earlier this week were bizarre, wait until we get to the next Pythonesque twist: AP’s legal arm claimed it knew nothing about the official AP YouTube channel, and continued to insist that the videos be removed.
Christian Grantham has the full story here, complete with an interview with the station owner.
The import takeaway is that AP is now threatening sites that embed its YouTube videos, irrespective of whether they are AP affiliates or not. We have AP video content from YouTube on The Inquisitr, as would many, many other sites, so there’s a decent chance that we’re all on a list somewhere in the AP legal department and could well end up receiving C&D’s as well.
The time for an AP boycott in nigh.
