Associated Press threatens AP affiliate over YouTube channel

By Cory Doctorow at 10:24 pm Wednesday, Apr 8

The Associated Press, in its zeal to keep the news a secret, has begun to send legal threats to itself. WTNQ-FM, an AP affiliate in Tennessee, received the legal threat over its YouTube channel, through which it makes its/AP's material available to its listeners. When WTNQ-FM's Frank Strovel called up the AP exec in charge of the anti-YouTube campaign to discuss this, he discovered that "nobody told the A.P. executive that the august news organization even has a YouTube channel which the A.P. itself controls, and that someone at the A.P. decided that it is probably a good idea to turn on the video embedding function on so that its videos can spread virally across the Web, along with the ads in the videos."

Strovel: And we're an A.P. affiliate for crying out loud! I stumped him on that one. . . . What is really shocking is that they were shocked that they've got a YouTube channel that people are embedding on their Websites. He seemed shocked by that. 'Oh, I am going to have to look into that" is what he told me.

Grantham: What an idiot!

Strovel: I know, I know.

A.P. Exec Doesn't Know It Has A YouTube Channel: Threatens Affiliate For Embedding Videos (via Memex 1.1)