Drudge Retort was NOT pasting whole articles, like other blogs he was posting excerpts.

The AP issued takedown notices based on the DMCA, not general copyright law. Even the awful DMCA has a ‘fair use’ clause. The AP’s actions are far beyond the scope of the DMCA, AP is making unreasonable demands unsupported by the law.

The AP is wrong, no matter how cool it is that it’s a worker’s collective whose ED is a right-wing extremist.

The AP is WRONG! Their demands have NO basis in law (just like the RIAA says that making a CD of music bought online is illegal – it isn’t under US law).

Kos has the right response – follow the law to the letter and AP can bite it. Notice AP has only gone after small liberal blogs, not large blogs that have money and certainly NOT conservative blogs. Because AP KNOWS it’s wrong (just like Monsanto went after a small dairy in Maine for daring to say their milk was RGBH free and left the ones that could afford to defend themselves alone).

AP is just another huge right-wing multinational that wants to make up their own rules despite what the law actually says, and then bully small liberal blogs into submission creating their own precedent. Oh, and AP routinely infringes copyright of their own writers, so just what leg do the hypocrites that run AP stand on?

I believe you’re in error. I’m extremely familiar with the passage you quote. The only part of that passage that applies in this case, I believe, is “summary of an address or article, with brief quotations, in a news report.” The case law I’ve seen seems to pretty much come down on the side of the “news” when media outlets are reporting on the address, article, or quotations themselves. I think that’s an important distinction.

For instance, if one is reporting on a speech given by a CEO of a major corporation, one must quote parts of that speech to make the reporting coherent. This does not mean that one can take someone else’s report on the same speech and substitute it for one’s own report.

See the difference?

Hey, I think copyright law has, in many instances, gone way too far, driven by the Disney lobby. But think about it this way. If, say, the Bugtussle Herald is not a member of AP and has made no contribution to AP, but then publishes an AP story on its front page, would that not be copyright infringement? If a blog does the same, is that not copyright infringement?

As for the AP’s assertion that blogs or anyone else must pay for five words, regardless of the situation (such as parody, critique, or other areas falling under fair use), that’s simply absurd and, IMO, incompetent on their part.

“The distinction between “fair use” and infringement may be unclear and not easily defined. There is no specific number of words, lines, or notes that may safely be taken without permission. Acknowledging the source of the copyrighted material does not substitute for obtaining permission.

The 1961 Report of the Register of Copyrights on the General Revision of the U.S. Copyright Law cites examples of activities that courts have regarded as fair use: “quotation of excerpts in a review or criticism for purposes of illustration or comment; quotation of short passages in a scholarly or technical work, for illustration or clarification of the author’s observations; use in a parody of some of the content of the work parodied; summary of an address or article, with brief quotations, in a news report; reproduction by a library of a portion of a work to replace part of a damaged copy; reproduction by a teacher or student of a small part of a work to illustrate a lesson; reproduction of a work in legislative or judicial proceedings or reports; incidental and fortuitous reproduction, in a newsreel or broadcast, of a work located in the scene of an event being reported.”

I would submit that almost anything quoted in a blog could, does, or may be argued to, fit into these guidelines.

As a former publisher, whose income derived from the sale of words on paper, paid for by customers, I really do understand what they AP is trying to do and why the AP would like all of us in the blogging world to give them money. However, they are not allowed, subject to legislation to pursue avenues to get it other than the ones permitted by the law. They simply want to scare all of us out here on the internet into giving them money while they try to adjust to new realities of economics in the information game. In the software world that is called the RIAA and the Daryl McBride tactic of presumption.

Nope, not gonna happen, and they will find out that poking the people that help them disseminate their information is a bad idea in the long run.

On the subject of reductio ad absurdum, check out this tongue in cheek comment here, http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/2008/06/associated-press-allegedly-und.php
No, not affiliated with them, just found it highly amusing.

But on the web, if the brief excerpt is fully attributed and linked back to the original article, this is both driving traffic directly to the original article and also making the article more visible to search engines, which is a benefit to the publisher if its ad revenues depend on traffic.

I sometimes find entire blog posts of mine pasted on other blogs, and this annoys the hell out of me even if it’s linked. If the entire article is there, why would anyone feel a need to click on the link back to me? But that’s not what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about brief excerpts. Now the AP wants to charge bloggers for use of as few as five words. That’s insane.

I write for the New York Times Company’s About.com site, which is a big commercial site, and I can tell you we live and die by traffic. Search engine optimization and traffic driving is the be-all and end-all of that business. If someone excerpts some of my writing with a link, this drives traffic back to my work on About.com and also helps move my writing up to the top of google searches, driving more traffic. Ultimately this makes About.com more money and it makes me more money, which makes me happy.

The New York Times encourages us to sniff out people re-publishing entire articles, and the NYT lawyers will issue takedown orders if such an article is found. But excerpts with links? We like people to publish excerpts with links.

There is indeed a crisis in news reporting now, because newspapers are losing revenue and cutting back on reporters and news bureaus. News gathering costs money, and bloggers do make free use of the work done by news-gatherers.

However, the issue ultimately is one of business models. The old print media business models don’t apply to the Web. How will news gatherers and media make profits in the future? The way things are falling out now suggests traffic and SEO are huge assets that web sites must cultivate to survive.

The AP is nuts.

Sorry, but I believe you are in error. Copyright law is very complex because it depends on case law, for the most part. I’ve researched it as thoroughly as I know how, and I’m still confused, primarily because it requires balancing four factors with sub parts to each factor.

One thing that seems clear to me, though (and I’m willing to be convinced otherwise if you have evidence to the contrary) is that copyright law most definitely protects practically any intellectual product except for certain exceptions, most notably “fair use.”

Essentially, the AP is wasting its time delving into a medium it obviously doesn’t understand.

By the way, did you pay a fee to display that AP logo? And that excerpt from CJR seems like a awful big number of words to be quoting without making a payment.

See how ridiculous this can get, hmmm?

from wikipedia:
Her reporting was largely responsible for feeding the controversy surrounding Obama advisor Austan Goolsbee’s meeting with the Canadian consulate [16], as she broke the story on a memo suggesting that Goolsbee had reassured the Canadian government that Barack Obama’s stance on NAFTA was “more about political positioning than a clear articulation of policy plans”.

On 18 April 2008, she produced a story on the Democratic candidates in which the first sentence was: “Democratic presidential rivals Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama are complaining about which candidate is the biggest complainer.”[17]

On June 1, 2008, she produced a story on the Democratic convention in which the first sentence was: “The fate of nearly 2.3 million Democratic presidential primary votes belongs to 30 party activists.” [18]. The Democratic Convention Rules & Bylaws Committee is made up of members of the National Democratic Committee.

Ingrid
(and now they talk about momnesia? pulleez..how long do you think women knew about that one? I know.. totally off-topic)

Can you explain to me exactly how fair use precedents allow blogs to take large chunks of AP stories and publish them? I’m not a copyright attorney, but I do own a business that runs up against copyright law all the time, and I’ve had to research the law a great deal to keep from running afoul of it.

You seem to know some things about the law that I don’t know, and I’d appreciate your insights into why what the AP is objecting to would qualify for fair use provisions.

As far as being fair and reasonable? Not likely.

Boycott the AP? not likely, they are such easy targets. But a good troll if that was what was intended.

The others slice out a part of the AP’s pie and probably do more in depth. I no longer think the NYT’s motto fits. It’s ruled these days by the same revenue straitjacket other newspaper companies are. And it does not enjoy government support.

You want news? The AP will bring it to you. But the AP will not always provide you context and analysis. The others will … and so will talented bloggers.

Got a question, though – you mentioned Reuters and UPI, but there are other sources that run nationally and/or internationally as well – AFP, BBC, NPR. Do you consider them more in the NYTimes vein (single outlet with the financial clout to run international operations) or the AP vein?

Yet good analytical work, such as we do here, gets ignored for op-ed page inclusion.

Nice piece, Doc. And I learned much, like the fact that the AP is nonprofit and is owned by its members.

What most of us bloggers do is merely commentary, and it can be very important at times. And the blogs’ ability to amplify certain news stories that deserve it, and that have been overlooked by the MSM, is also very important, I think. But the real news is still almost entirely generated by people who do it for a living.

Thanks to all of them.