As Jeff Jarvis notes, you have to love the irony of news executives decrying the "theft" of their content from the Forbidden City: the place where the imperial rulers of old China banned regular people from so much as visiting.

"We content creators have been too slow to react to the free exploitation of news by third parties without input or permission," Curley, the AP's chief executive, told a meeting of 300 media leaders in Beijing.

By which he means just linking to their stories without permission, or copying more than a trivial number of words (I think the last proposal from the AP was 5) for context. What's hard to figure out is their thought process; if no one linked to AP stories (or other news outlet stories; Rupert Murdoch is quoted elsewhere in the story), then how would anyone find them? Do these people think we're all going to return to the 80's, and go to a newstand? Do they expect some steampunked "modern" version of that, whereby we have to visit the AP, or Fox, or CNN (et. al.) directly?

That sure sounds like the future they want. The problem for them is, it's not the future they're going to get. They can accept reality, or they can go down the same losing path the RIAA has already trod.