And you’re right – it only takes about five minute for some other source to put up an AP story. Assuming that source actually paid for the rights to the story (which is true if the source is any “old media” site), then the AP has no control whatsoever over what happens to the material once it’s placed on that source’s website. Which means that the effect of the AP’s policy is just to ensure reduced traffic to its site and greater traffic to secondary party sites, thereby decreasing their own revenue, as you said. Meanwhile, the material the AP wanted to protect is still out there getting quoted in ways beyond the AP’s control. I suppose they could start to require the old media sites to not post AP articles on the internet, but good luck getting those sites to agree to that policy, which would be economic suicide for the old media, which is already struggling to compete.