Bloggers versus the AP

Posted on June 18, 2008

The big censorship issue among bloggers at the moment is the attempt by the Associated Press news organization to stop bloggers from using excerpts from AP stories. It is a fairly serious issue as many of the stories you see in newspapers and on web portals such as Yahoo are transcriptions of what AP supplies. Below is an excerpt from the NYT on the matter:

“Last week, The A.P. took an unusually strict position against quotation of its work, sending a letter to the Drudge Retort asking it to remove seven items that contained quotations from A.P. articles ranging from 39 to 79 words.

On Saturday, The A.P. retreated. Jim Kennedy, vice president and strategy director of The A.P., said in an interview that the news organization had decided that its letter to the Drudge Retort was “heavy-handed” and that The A.P. was going to rethink its policies toward bloggers. The quick about-face came, he said, because a number of well-known bloggers started criticizing its policy, claiming it would undercut the active discussion of the news that rages on sites, big and small, across the Internet.

The Drudge Retort was initially started as a left-leaning parody of the much larger Drudge Report, run by the conservative muckraker Matt Drudge. In recent years, the Drudge Retort has become more of a social news site, similar to sites like Digg, in which members post links to news articles for others to comment on. But Rogers Cadenhead, the owner of the Drudge Retort and several other Web sites, said the issue goes far beyond one site. “There are millions of people sharing links to news articles on blogs, message boards and sites like Digg. If The A.P. has concerns that go all the way down to one or two sentences of quoting, they need to tell people what they think is legal and where the boundaries are.”

Source

Amusing how the NYT gets in a shot at Matt Drudge. They hate it that he has a bigger readership than they do.

A comment from a conservative blogger:

“The fact is that under copyright law fair use is well defined and needs no further clarification. By and large blogs are non-commercial, hugely non-profit ventures that fall well within the guidelines of fair use. In short while people are cringing at the thought of AP going after them the fact is that you CAN beat them in court if you know what you’re talking about. If you know the law. I did when this back in the early days of the internet and several times since”.

Source

Fausta has more

The latest is that the AP are going to levy a per-word charge on bloggers. They will find it hard to make that stick, though. One can certainly use excerpts without breaching copyright and, from memory, even a third of the whole article would pass as an allowable excerpt.

A lot of bloggers are saying that they will simply not use AP stories. If a lot of bloggers do that it would be fun. It would reduce the hits on AP sites and lead to a loss of advertising revenue for them!

I intend just to ignore the whole thing. Three of my blogs get around 1,000 hits per day but I am still way below the radar, I think. Not a bad place to be in this crazy age.

(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, DISSECTING LEFTISM, GREENIE WATCH, OBAMA WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)

» Filed Under 1st Amendment, Liberal Media/Bias, News

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Comments

3 Responses to “Bloggers versus the AP”

Mr. Incredible on June 18th, 2008 11:24 am

AP cannot stop anybody from quoting AP-written material, as long as there is attribution. Example: “AP reports…”

Where AP quotes somebody, a blogger can quote that body directly, without AP attribution, cuz the quote is a fact apart from AP. A blogger doesn’t have to write, “This guy told AP….” The blogger can say, “This guy said…”

However, when you use a recording of the person AP interviews, you are using the FORM and you are required to credit AP. Copyright goes to form, not content, and certainly not to stream of consciousness statements. That’s why, when using a recording of “Meet the Press,” another network has to credit NBC. However, if I quote what James “the Snake” Carville said on MtP, I don’t have to say that he said it on MtP cuz NBC has nothing to do with his statement. Carville’s form is his, not NBC’s.

By the way, where universities and colleges say that professors’ teachings in class are copyrighted, that’s not true cuz stream of consciousness cannot be copyrighted.
Mr. Incredible on June 18th, 2008 11:39 am

Further…

What AP reports is of public interest and debate. Its very job is open to debate.

So, AP can stop nobody, as long, as I say, as the writer attributes AP-written and originated material to AP. Quotes of individuals within the story written by AP can be attributed to the speaker alone, unless you play an AP recording of it. Then, you gotta give AP credit cuz copyright goes to form, and the recording is the AP form.
Decidenator on June 18th, 2008 4:07 pm

“Amusing how the NYT gets in a shot at Matt Drudge. They hate it that he has a bigger readership than they do.”

What is the shot they took at him? And where did you get the idea that Drudge has more readers than the NYT? That’s ridiculous.