Canadian Press reports that The Associated Press sued AHN Media Corp. and All Headline News Corp. for copying and rewriting its AP stories for Internet distribution.
The AP lawsuit said AHN employees delete information that identifies the material as AP stories, such as writers’ bylines and the “(AP) – ” stamp, before distributing it online.
The AP claims AHN tells its employees to search other websites for breaking news stories, then copy or rewrite them and distribute them as AHN stories. The lawsuit said AHN is marketing its service with misappropriated AP stories to the same customer base as AP.
Because AHN has no reporters and fewer employees, who are poorly paid, the lawsuit said, “defendants are able to offer their ‘news service’ to customers and potential customers at a price that is far lower than the AP can offer for its services.”
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Originally posted on January 17, 2008 @ 11:12 pm
I can attest to all the allegiations made by the Associated press. I worked for Jeff Brown dba/All Headline News for a couple months. He told me he had permission to rewrite news articles from Internet media. We did no actual reporting, though I have been night assignment editor at KIMN Radio, Denver, CBC stringer, KWGN TV assignment editor and other posts in close to 50 years in journalsim. Also winner of several major awards. I am retired and jumped at the chance to earn some extra income working at my home computer. All he had me (and every other writer) do was copy and rewrite articles from the Internet. When he got complaints we were told to use only articles which appeared from at least two sources (i.e. AP CNN etc) so they would be considered “open” information. Also I and most others never got paid. Jeff Brown had more excuses for non payment then my ex-wife at bedtime.