Gotta love those guys at Woot. They just sold to Amazon for $110 million, but that’s not stopping them from calling anyone out as they see fit. In this case, we particularly love it because they’re calling out the AP — and they’re doing so right on their highly trafficked homepage.
You see, Woot noticed that the AP covered the story of their sale five days ago. But in doing so, they also noticed that the AP used a number of quotes from CEO Matt Rutledge’s blog post about the sale. According to the AP’s own ridiculous rules for using quotations, Woot figures that the AP owes them $17.50.
The AP has been banned on TechCrunch for two years now because of this ridiculous rule. In fact, we’re breaking our own rule here by acknowledging they even exist. But this is too good to pass up — and it’s actually similar to something we did a couple years ago, trying to charge the AP $12.50 for their usage of quotes from us. To my knowledge, we’re still waiting for that check.
But Woot is more forgiving than we are. They’re willing to cut a deal:
But, hey. We’re all friends here. And invoicing is such a hassle in today’s paperless society, are we right? How about this: instead of cutting us a check for the web content you liberated from our site, all you’ll need to do is show us your email receipt from today’s two pack of Sennheiser MX400 In-Ear Headphones, and we’ll call it even.
Yes, Woot is letting the AP skip out on the money they owe if they simply buy a couple of the featured products today on Woot. Good idea. And they’re backing it up: “Don’t force us to pass this matter to a collection agency,” they write.
Best of luck with those jokesters, Woot.
Below, find the key blurb from Woot’s message to the AP, which hopefully they won’t charge us for since we don’t try to enforce the same ridiculous rules the AP does:
The AP, we can’t thank you enough for looking our way. You see, when we showed off our good news on Wednesday afternoon, we expected we’d get a little bit of attention. But when we found your little newsy thing you do, we couldn’t help but notice something important. And that something is this: you printed our web content in your article! The web content that came from our blog! Why, isn’t that the very thing you’ve previously told nu-media bloggers they’re not supposed to do?
So, The AP, here we are. Just to be fair about this, we’ve used your very own pricing scheme to calculate how much you owe us. By looking through the link above, and comparing your post with our original letter, we’ve figured you owe us roughly $17.50 for the content you borrowed from our blog post, which, by the way, we worked very very hard to create.
[thanks Anurag]
haha sweet!
Brilliant!
awesomely brilliant
Best article Ive read on TC all day!
Wait, this is a Siegler article about something not related to Apple? How did this happen?
Yeah, but wouldn’t you know it, some loser in the comments has to have a little whinge, and that guy mentions apple.
Brilliant marketing by Woot.
Why are you giving the AP credit in Crunchbase?
Yeah Was it necessary to give AP credit in the Crunchbase? Couldn't you have done without it?
Nabeel
It's payback time, AP. Woot is not being "heavy-handed", they are just making a call with the same rules AP have set, so I don't see how AP can refute that.
haha this is pure gold.
Nice post :)
Had a good laugh about that. I didn’t know AP’s weird rules. That’s just ridiculous.
And the call it even.
It wouldn't be too hard to create a bot that read the AP's feeds and calculated their total bill across all their stories, who they owe it to, and that aggregated, opt-in entity would be owed enough to bother invoicing. The proceeds could be sent over to Creative Commons, the EFF, or such.
Whichever startups does this as a marketing tool = brilliant
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This is an absolute FAIL FAIL FAIL
Yep, your comment IS an absolute fail.
….too much irony…… to measure……
Love it. Well played.
good Job!!
Genius!
Excellent…..very nice post
I hate the AP — well played Woot, well played.
It's nice that Woot offered The AP various payment options :)
Thank you WOOT for once again giving the AP a dose of it’s own medicine. I didn’t know WOOT was local to DFW! Cool.
Actually, I think Amazon paid $110 million for the "wit of Woot." which then showed it's appreciation by throwing the site into the deal.
If every blogger is to do this, the AP will find itself out in the cold!
I recommend that the AP take the deal. Not only is Woot letting them off easy, but, hey, Sennheisers!
Oh, Woot, how I love you. Nicely done.
Ha!
They(The AP) won't pay of course because like the rest of the MediaIndustrialComplex, they're above the law and their own rules. They're "The Media" after all and to them everybody else is just a bunch of high school yearbook punters.
Genius. Love it. Brilliant marketing. I wonder how many headphones they sold from TechCrunch.
hmmm… bless them!
haha this is brilliant!
Great job Woot! Dont forget to charge 'em late fees!
Now this is a perfect opportunity for the AP to join the evolved species and play along. But no, they are the epitome of the clueless old vice principle wearing the same busted brown suit he wore during Ike's inauguration.
The claim that the AP wants to charge bloggers to quote from their stories is apparently false. Here's a link to the Columbia Journalism Review calling out TechCrunch and other sites that continue to perpetuate what it calls a "zombie lie." http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/ap_woot_charge.php
Almost as false as the claims that you're nothing resembling an unintelligent shill! That, or for a truly "concerned" citizen, you certainly omitte^^^^^^ (just like cjr) missed an important point brought up in the very first reply to the article you linked.
** *http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_AMAZON_WOOT?SITE=OHALL2&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
At the bottom is a link that saying "click here for copyright permissions." If you're a blogger who is wondering about doing the right thing by the AP, and uncertain, you might click on that. In turn, you get this:
http://license.icopyright.net/rights/tag.act?tag=...
That page has a section saying: "Post all or part of this article on a web site, intranet or blog." Click on that, and you get this page:
http://license.icopyright.net/rights/postServiceG...
In turn, that page has a button saying "Embed an excerpt of this article on your web site, intranet or blog" with a cost ranging from $17.50 upward.
Embed on your blog. But the AP supposedly doesn't charge bloggers. So which is it?***
So, which is it, do they not charge bloggers, or as this form states, should one pay $17.50+ to embed an excerpt in a blog?
This is total BS, and you know it. Here's a fair analysis: http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/anatomy_of_a_zombie_...