In a speech on Monday, Associated Press CEO Tom Curley announced that the AP would soon set up “an independent rights clearinghouse for news publishers to manage the distribution and use of their content beyond their own Web properties.” (Speech text in PDF link)
The entity, to be designed with input from multiple stakeholders including AP and the Newspaper Association of America, will be established sometime in 2011. It will be a business-to-business clearinghouse, not involving transactions with consumers. Through the clearinghouse, originators of news content (ranging from local bloggers on up; this is not limited to AP members) will be able to distribute their content for digital publication by others, and receive back royalties of revenue shares according to protocols yet to be determined. The clearinghouse will be facilitate a rapid, realtime means of negotiating rights for such content sharing, resulting in a large increase in the potential market for any particular piece of content.As an illustration: a newspaper (or a broadcaster, or a local blogger) could release a piece of content (a story, a photo, a video) with tags indicating what it is about, who owns it, how and where it may be used, and how the content originator is to be paid. The content, distributed through any available channel, is picked up by another publisher, aggregator, or personalized news service and used in accordance with the attached rights and payments protocols. The clearinghouse monitors usage and payment obligations throughout the network of participating content originators and publishers, and settles transactions among them.
The plan Curley described is very similar to what I proposed in a post here in July, in which I asked, “What if news content owners and creators adopted a variation on the long-established ASCAP-BMI performance rights organization system as a model by which they could collect payment for some of their content when it is distributed outside the boundaries of their own publications and websites?”
Curley framed the opportunity in very similar language: “With the new rights clearinghouse initiative, we are hoping to give news publishers more tools to pursue an audience and capture value beyond the boundaries of their own digital publications.”
