The A.P. uses DRM to protect news

The Associated Press (The A.P.) is developing a watermark to track who is using their content. With this watermark, The A.P. can indicate how the content, whether it is a written article, photo or video, can be used. Furthermore, it keeps track of the way in which the content is used.

The purpose of using the DRM is not to reduce use, but rather to better be able to capitalise on the content’s use and re-use. Sites that want to post The A.P.’s news, even if it’s just a headline with a link, need a licencing agreement. “If someone can build multibillion-dollar businesses out of keywords, we can build multihundred-million businesses out of headlines, and we’re going to do that,” states The A.P.’s president Tom Curly in The New York Times.

At the moment, it remains to be seen with what kind of news-users The A.P. is going to enforce it’s new measure. Curly’s statement points to search engines and content-aggregators to possibly be the subject of a stricter regime at The A.P.. Another spokesperson claims the new measure is aimed at solving "The problem … that our stories are getting scraped and reused in large quantities by aggregators who haven\'t paid any licence fees".