Journalism: "What we need is radically imaginative experimentation"

[Commentary] The Associated Press can't make enough out of legal uses of its content under the business models it has in place. One nice side effect of introducing the new service is to shift discussion away from the fact that its business model is failing and towards proposed technical and -- I would predict -- legal changes to safeguard that model. These may or may not be good ideas. But whichever way one comes out on that issue, one shouldn't be fooled by the meme that the newspaper industry in general and the AP in particular is in trouble mainly because of uses of its content that are illicit under current law. Universities may make news gathering a larger part of their mission. Subscription services may spring up to support a particular journalist or coverage of a particular issue. Newspapers may indeed start charging more aggressively for their news. Rupert Murdoch certainly plans to. Maybe the AP's tracking beacons will even have a role, though I doubt it. What we need is radically imaginative experimentation; public and private. And that is something we are unlikely to get if we succumb to either digital complacency or tales of piratical alarm. [James Boyle is a professor of law at Duke.]