The Associated Press, long upset that people often quote and link to its stories on the internet, has imposed a $2.50 per word fee for bloggers who wish to quote one of its stories.
I understand. It’s tough to have a lot of people driving web traffic to your site. Considering the number of articles attributed to the AP, the cost of servers and bandwidth must be outrageous.
But I have a solution: Stop posting stories on the internet.
I have scientific proof that this will work. For several months, I did not blog at all. During that period, not a single blogger linked to or quoted any blog post I wrote.
Here’s how I see it:
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Cancel all your web hosting contracts.
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Take the money you save, and teach your reporters how to write.
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Reserve some cash with which to research your stories for factual accuracy.
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Hire many, many lawyers to scour the internet looking for violations of any of your rules and policies.
Did I leave anything out?
From now on, I’m going to Reuters. The Associated Press can go to hell.
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