The Associated Press (AP) has sent a cease and desist letter to a Tennessee radio station earlier this week claiming copyright violations. In the letter, the AP claimed WTNQ-FM in LaFollette, TN violated their copyright by embedding the AP’s YouTube videos on the station’s website.

Read an exchange on Twitter from WTNQ’s Frank Strovel and NZT’s Scott Adcox on this developing story. On today’s Morning Browser, I spoke with Strovel via Skype.

The AP posts video content to a robust YouTube channel that allows anyone to embed the content on websites and blogs. Any YouTube channel owner can disable the embed code. AP has chosen to publish the embed code. When the AP was reached by phone by WTNQ’s Frank Strovel for clarification on their cease and desist, AP said they weren’t aware they had a YouTube channel, saying they’ll look into the “Youtube issue” and get back with the station.

Let me repeat that.

The AP’s web team posts video to the AP’s YouTube for anyone to embed, but AP’s Vice President of Affiliate Relations in Chicago and AP’s own legal department have no clue their YouTube channel exists.

Apparently, executives and attorneys at AP have no clue that the AP YouTube channel is designed so that people will embed these videos like WTNQ-FM did legally. The AP VP and attorney’s general lack of understanding led them to publicly embarass their news organization with this foolish claim of copyright violation.

What is happening to the Associated Press? Does AP seriously have executives and attorneys who are this clueless about their own operations, the law and the internet in general? What kind of copyright attorney doesn’t even know what is and is not legal to do with embedable YouTube video?

Clearly AP has two different corporate cultures. One that gets the internet as a new distribution and revenue model for their important product and one that is overpaid and running AP into the ground.

News Tech Zilla

The question comes down to why the AP would send a cease and desist letter to one of it’s own affiliates? Why would AP upload videos with embeddable code to YouTube for use anywhere, and then draft a letter such as this?

Michael Silence

Curious. If AP is out to make a point you’d think the international behemouth would pick a bit more of a high profile target. Or maybe they want to make an example by getting a little guy to rollover. Well, that little guy has a Twitter account and a blog. So much for that tactic.

UPDATE 5:14pm - I’m not at all surprised by the reaction to this story. Frank Strovel finally got a break today to write up his experience. Go take a look at his account.

OK, so yesterday I pulled the videos. Today, we talked again. He still had no answer as to why they are posting content on YouTube for embedding when it’s apparently a crime to do so. I think I’ve set his office into a bit of a tizzy. He said he has talked to his superiors and still has no answers to my questions but they are “looking into the matter”.

They want us to subscribe to a “free” service that will allow one main video player to be embedded on our site (above the fold) that will offer different videos from the Associated Press and that could even bring us “revenue sharing”. I guess they have ads embedded in the player and any clicks on it will result in a few pennies thrown our way. Whatever.

I still want an answer to my original question and so far they are baffled and cannot give me one. They actually seemed to act like they didn’t even know they had a YouTube channel!

And a special thanks to TechCrunch’s Erick Schonfeld for helping bring this moment in AP history to light:

You cannot make this stuff up. Forget for a moment that WTNQ is itself an A.P. affiliate and that the A.P. shouldn’t be harassing its own members. Apparently, 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.

Also read:

• AP ups stupidity quotient another 16,000 notches - DailyKos
• Does AP know how its YouTube channel works? - C-Net

UPDATE 04-09-09 2:06pm - Here are some updates from WTNQ-FM’s Frank Strovel via Twitter:

FrankStrovel @BreakingNews OK, one more word: There was never talk of suing. GM has asked me to stop talking about it and I agree. Situation resolved.

@FrankStrovel 2/2 All is well now. Boss happy. AP is happy.

@FrankStrovel 1/2 Final word on AP mess: boss not thrilled with attention. But AP called. They saw the stories, apologized and said go ahead & embed.

@FrankStrovel Just got an apology from AP. Can embed vids again. More later.

UPDATE 2:42pm - In TechCrunch comments, Frank Strovel corrects his initial comments on the show that this was a “cease and desist” and that the regional rep was a “Vice President.” These are important distinctions.

The AP called and apologized today. And, again, it was not an ‘executive’ that I’ve been dealing with (as some blogs are saying…but not TC) but a rep for its radio affiliates. I want that to be clear. He’s actually a nice guy just doing his job but got caught by surprise that AP radio stations were embedding their videos from YouTube. They initially thought that was in violation of our station’s license agreement with them. But was informed today it is not. (Duh!)

He admitted the initial email was probably too stern and it did seem like a cease and desist and regretted it. Said after a couple days, their legal dept. found that, yes, we can embed vids from their YouTube on our station’s website.