The US’ Department of Justice (DoJ) has announced its support for a proposal by The Associated Press (AP) to develop and operate a voluntary news registry to facilitate the licencing and Internet distribution of news content created by the AP, its members, and other news originators. The department said that the development and operation of the registry is not likely to reduce competition among news content owners and could provide pro-competitive benefits to both participating content owners and content users.
The DoJ's position was stated in a business review letter to counsel for the AP from Christine Varney, Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Department of Justice's Antitrust Division.
The registry would consist of a centralised digital database containing news content from multiple content owners. It would allow content owners to register and list individual items of news content, specify the uses others may make of that content, and detail the terms on which such content may be licenced. The registry would enable content users to determine quickly the licensing and use terms applicable to a specific content owner or to individual items of registered content.
The registry would be a non-exclusive method of accessing, licencing and using content on the Internet. It would be open, on nondiscriminatory terms, to all owners and users of Internet news content. Content owners would be free to select which, if any, content to include in the registry. They would be allowed to offer registered news content outside of the registry. They would also be free to join other competing Internet registry services.
Content owners, including the AP, would not set, formulate, benchmark or suggest any licencing terms for any other content owner's news items listed in the registry. Each participating content owner would set unilaterally the licencing terms for its own content, without the involvement of either other owners or the AP.
Also, The AP would institute and maintain firewalls to prevent the registry from being used to disseminate revenue, use, traffic and transactional information among participating content owners. In addition, the AP intends to limit public information sharing among competitors by allowing only registered content users to access public licencing terms. Under the department's business review procedure, an organisation may submit a proposed action to the Antitrust Division and receive a statement as to whether the division currently intends to challenge the action under the antitrust laws.
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