AP set to charge for web news

At AP's annual meeting, Tom Curley, AP president and chief executive, told customers that now that the Interweb is part of the furniture it is time that it started to pay its way.

He said that AP will start a form of online licensing from January 1, to "preserve the value and enforce the rights of our intellectual property across the media spectrum."

However AP is not actually a company as such. It is owned by the customers who also provide it with content. So to introduce online membership, the outfit has to drop its membership fees to its normal members so they are not charged twice.

AP also has to work out how it is going to calculate the cost of its online fees.

Membership in AP is usually based on the number of rags peddled or stuffed in letterboxes. The Washington Post will pay a lot of money, the Kapiti Observer, the local paper in Paekakariki, New Zealand, not much at all.

There is a free copy of this AP story here in the Sydney Morning Herald. µ