I see that the AP is boldly running into the same wall that kicked the RIAA upside the head: policing copyrights the hard way. Take a look at their explanation of what they're doing to guard their rights - I particularly like number 6:

What do you mean by "search pages"?
When consumers look for news today on search engines, they often get directed in a random fashion to a wide variety of news sources, blogs and other Web pages. Searches on breaking news topics such as floods, earthquakes and shootings don't dependably produce results from authoritative local news sources, and often not even to those media responsible for producing the news stories. AP will work with its member newspapers, broadcasters and other media to create a set of search-optimized pages that will guide users to the most timely, authoritative coverage related to their searches

So the problem is that in searches, I may not get directed straight to the wire story - I may get someone's commentary on the wire story, or - heaven forbid - someone who isn't an AP stringer reporting on the story themselves.

The problem here is in perceived authority. The AP thinks they have it, and that no one else deserves it. Authority is earned though, on a case by case basis. People reading the new get to make up their own minds about this, rather than having "our betters" decide for us.

Ultimately, this goes back to the AP mentally living in a scarcity based news model - after scarcity has been replaced by abundance. They can't just assume they're the most authoritative news source any longer; they have to earn that designation on a market by market and topic by topic (and even location by location) basis. I'm sure that drives them nuts, but that's reality now.

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