The New Nation - Internet Edition

Bdnews24.com

The New York-based global news agency The Associated Press has sued another US-based company for copying and rewriting AP stories and distributing them on the internet.

The lawsuit, filed Monday in Manhattan federal court, has sought unspecified damages from AHN Media Corp. and All Headline News Corp. and an end to the appropriation of AP's copyright-protected stories.

The AP claims that AHN Media Corp., based in Wellington, Florida, copies its stories from Web sites that legitimately carry them and redistributes them on its Web site and as a service it sells to other news outlets, competing for the AP's customers.

"AHN calls itself a `news service,'" the lawsuit said.

"However, on information and belief, AHN has no reporters and is simply a vehicle for copying news reports and misappropriating news gathered and reported by real news services such as AP," the agency said in a news report, which is obtained by bdnews24.com. bdnews24.com, Bangladesh's first internet-based news agency apart from being the first online newspaper, picked the report considering the issue's importance in an age of fiercely competitive news market across the world and in Bangladesh, where plagiarism in the media industry is highly prevalent.

The AP said a person who answered the telephone at AHN's headquarters Monday said there would be no comment on pending litigation and hung up without identifying himself.

An e-mail to the company was not immediately returned, the AP said.

The lawsuit said that AHN employees delete information that identifies the material as AP stories, such as writers' bylines and the "(AP)" stamp, before distributing it online.

The AP claims that AHN tells its employees to search other Web sites for breaking news stories, then copy or rewrite them and distribute them as AHN stories. The lawsuit said AHN is marketing its service with misappropriated AP stories to the same customer base as AP.

Because AHN has no reporters and fewer employees, who are poorly paid, the lawsuit said, "defendants are able to offer their 'news service' to customers and potential customers at a price that is far lower than the AP can offer for its services."

AHN and the AP entered into a contract in 2003 that gave AHN the right to distribute the first two paragraphs of news stories offered as part of the AP Online service, the lawsuit said. AP ended the contract in 2005 because AHN repeatedly used more content than was permitted under the contract, the lawsuit said.

The AP is a 161-year-old cooperative owned by news organisations, with more than 4,000 employees across the world.