News wire South African Press Association's (Sapa's) directive to Web sites to remove all historical content as it shuts down creates an impossible burden on news portals, which have no choice but to adhere to their contractual obligations.
This comes after the wire service released a letter last week stating: "All Sapa copyrighted content, including copyrighted AP, AFP and dpa content supplied through Sapa's news subscription service, must be deleted from all subscriber media platforms, as well as archives, and storage facilities." This needs to be achieved by 7 April.
Sapa will be liquidated and cease to operate from midnight on 31 March.
Chris Borain, Independent Media's digital head, explains the media organisation, which has one of the biggest online presences in SA, is "studying the request, in line with our contractual requirements".
Borain notes Sapa conditions include that, when the deal to use its copy expires or is cancelled, the subscriber "will delete all content received from Sapa from its electronic storage facilities and libraries, including the Web and mobile application sites and storage facilities".
Paul Jacobson, digital media and law expert, says this means online portals have no choice, contractually, but to remove the content, even if this is not practically possible. However, he notes media Web sites could argue in court that removing the content is not in the best interest of the public, or they could seek to negotiate with the archive's new owners. "Removing this amount of content is equal to deleting history."
Last Friday, Sekunjalo Investment Holdings, one of the founding investors of the African News Agency (ANA), announced it had purchased Sapa's assets, including its brand name, news and picture archives.
ANA, the continent's first news syndication service, was launched on 1 March with an initial investment of $20 million.
Too complicated
ICT expert Adrian Schofield says: "Compliance with these requirements [to delete archives] is a highly complex and technical task, and not just a case of pulling out copy from dusty archives for news Web sites."
Schofield does not envy the task of those asked to delete content from Web sites that have been around for a number of years. "It will require a find-and-destroy algorithm that will have to be used manually, to ensure something important is not deleted - such as content that contains the word Sapa but is not Sapa-owned."
This is a mammoth task as techies would be required to delete archives that are not normally accessed. He says there is also not a solution that will fit every news Web site, as they all make use of different technologies.
Schofield adds the task would cost much money and resources, and is unfair towards news Web sites as they are the only Sapa subscribers with living content. He questions whether print publications would be required to go around and cut out copy from old newspapers.
Anton Harber, Caxton professor of journalism at the University of Witwatersrand, adds that when he first heard about Sapa asking its subscribers to delete its content, he laughed. He notes the scale of the requirement is a reflection of how heavily Web sites and newspapers rely on wire copy.
"By deleting all Sapa content, they are trying to unwind history and I am not sure if that is possible or desirable."
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