CJR: A Microformat with Major Implications
Saturday, 14 November 2009, 13:38
"The goal of hNews is to make certain elements of news articles machine-readable. In and of itself, this may not sound like much. One benefit is that it will help search engines and other parties do a better job sorting and analyzing information contained in news content (cover your ears, Rupert Murdoch!)."
Steve Yelvington: Microformats, hNews, the AP and the Animals
Thursday, 30 July 2009, 10:12
"Some geeks at the AP got together with some geeks in Europe and came up with a really smart idea. Unfortunately, that smart idea got sucked into the swirling vortex of panic and craziness that reigns at a lot of media companies these days. And a really smart idea has become terribly misunderstood, twisted into a really bad idea, portrayed as something it is not, sold as a cure for a questionable ailment that it can't fix. The idea is the application of microformats to news content."
Wired.com: AP Doesn’t Know Its Protection Tech Doesn’t Protect
Wednesday, 29 July 2009, 00:16
"Nothing in copyright law requires a blogger or commenter to include the meta-tags if they use an excerpt in a blog post. In fact for a blogger to comply, they’ll have to do more than just cut and paste – they will have to view the source code on a newspaper’s site, search through the HTML and javascript to find the text of the story and its micro-formats. Once the thief has gone to this trouble the purloined story will call home to report where it is being re-printed, via a Web Bug url embedded in the story. Only then would The News Registry even be aware of this use."
Ars Technica: DRM for news? Inside the AP’s plan to “wrap” its content
Wednesday, 29 July 2009, 00:14
"AP is simply relying on a newly-developed microformat called hNews. … In what way does this scheme 'wrap' and 'protect' the news? It doesn't; it simply marks it up, and adding tags expressing a content creator's wishes on reuse has no bearing on someone's rights under US copyright law. … You'll be forgiven if you find it difficult to square the reality of hNews with the AP's pronouncements about it."
