The stories over the weekend were bad enough – the Associated Press, with a long history of suing over quotations from their articles, went after Drudge Retort for having the audacity to link to their stories along with short quotations via reader submissions. Drudge Retort is doing nothing different than what Digg, TechMeme, Mixx and dozens of other sites do, and frankly the fact that they are being linked to should be considered a favor.
After heavy criticism over the last few days, the A.P. is in damage control mode, says the NYTimes, and retreating from their earlier position. But from what I read, they’re just pushing their case further.
They do not want people quoting their stories, despite the fact that such activity very clearly falls within the fair use exception to copyright law. They claim that the activity is an infringement.
A.P. vice president Jim Kennedy says they will issue guidelines telling bloggers what is acceptable and what isn’t, over and above what the law says is acceptable. They will “attempt to define clear standards as to how much of its articles and broadcasts bloggers and Web sites can excerpt without infringing on The A.P.’s copyright.”
Those that disregard the guidelines risk being sued by the A.P., despite the fact that such use may fall under the concept of fair use.
The A.P. doesn’t get to make it’s own rules around how its content is used, if those rules are stricter than the law allows. So even thought they say they are making these new guidelines in the spirit of cooperation, it’s clear that, like the RIAA and MPAA, they are trying to claw their way to a set of property rights that don’t exist today and that they are not legally entitled to. And like the RIAA and MPAA, this is done to protect a dying business model – paid content.
So here’s our new policy on A.P. stories: they don’t exist. We don’t see them, we don’t quote them, we don’t link to them. They’re banned until they abandon this new strategy, and I encourage others to do the same until they back down from these ridiculous attempts to stop the spread of information around the Internet.
How dare they go after the Drudge Retort.
Just kidding:) Great article
Amen. Screw em. The AP has great content but if they’re going to be complete sobs and live in the 90s with their practices then you’re better off.
I had no idea how old the Associated Press was. http://www.ap.o...ry/history.html
Actions like this show their age and increase the rate of their irrelevance.
This reminds me of those corrupt regimes that prevent the free flow of information to their people. Democrators !!!
You tell ‘em. They should just accept what is lawful, at the very least. Never mind they’re a dinosaur of an org, that hasn’t transitioned to the future.
A mindboggling decision on the AP’s part. Have they heard of the fair use doctrine?
Wow. I use AP stories in my Podcasts from time to time. I hope they don’t come after me. Blood from a stone, blood from a stone….
AP still has some solid and admirable beat writers (Tom Raum comes to mind) but overall, in this day and age — AP=journalistic establishment. too many faceless writers + not enough editors is recipe for disaster.
It’s a really really really sad day that the AP should lose to Drudge. Especially considering the epic fail that is teh drudge.
Ehmmm…Isn’t AP a kind of news aggregator too? Don’t they distribute news that other journalists with no relation to AP wrote and still charge money for it?
Does that mean ban Google News too? I think Google News pays AP to feature news stories from the AP network.
I wonder – you know, after the AP repeals this ridiculous position via lawsuits – if it has the potential of ultimately reversing the deals & rulings between Google and the AP.
Summary: Old Media freaks that New Media drives traffic to them… cuts off nose to spite own face.
Nose moves to Hollywood and gets new life in cold ads.
Seriously… AP who? Good policy Mike. I won’t be linking them until they wise up either. Not that they’ll notice – but they don’t deserve even a single click-thru from me.
The AP is owned by a bunch of US dailies. So it’s interesting that almost all the major papers (which own the AP) are blogging now and including the “direct quotations, even short ones” that the AP deems not “appropriate”.
BTW, one of those dailies, the NYT, even runs a Techmeme-style news aggregator that quotes headline + first sentence of articles. I wish Saul Hansell asked AP’s Jim Kennedy about the legitimacy of his blog, Bits, and his blog aggregator, BlogRunner.
Hi Mike,
French AFP is even older, 1835 vs 1846. And they too don’t like the way news fly on the Internet.
In 2005 they went against Google News. They managed to get a deal with Google. Much like Google did with the old AP apparently: http://www.paid...n-ap-afp-pa-and
Google News is not blogging however, for a blog post is not a search result page.
One is human made, the other is machine made.
But maybe the AP don’t get the difference?
After all, news.google.com simply creates quotes from articles… not full content. AFP is another example… all of that was rather ridiculous.
I’m actually glad the AP is doing this… it will show a wider audience how important the previous cases were.
And how asinine most of the outcomes were.
JeanHuguesRobert – apparently we’re surfing the same mental frequencies.
The fundamental problem with the AP is much worse: They don’t link to the people who often discover the stories. Compared to that major violation of Internet ethics, the fair use stuff is minor.
By not linking, the AP is demonstrating a massive lack of principles.
If you really want to affect them though, get a bunch of bloggers not to link to papers that are members of the AP; not just AP stories.
Gabe – excellent point.
Hey Mike..
Is the “Drudge Report” supposed to be mentioned in this article?
Ref. the second sentence, “Drudge Report is doing nothing different…”
ciao
Great article.
Google News is not blogging however, for a blog post is not a search result page.
One is human made, the other is machine made.
But maybe the AP don’t get the difference?
Dude – you got your Reports and Retorts all mixed up.
Brandon, I think that was Michael’s casual way of saying Drudge is a clot in the tubes.
Michael – Put techcrunch on the line with this thing. Don’t just ban AP articles, but make a week-long commitment (or even until it’s resolved) to posting about nothing but this.
That stance is a giant roll of the dice, but if you ask me I think you should consider it an investment.
This case is chilling but also hilarious, because AP went after “Drudge Retort” (with a “t”) which is a parody site of Drudge Report owned by the famed Matt Drudge.
Don’t we have enough Supreme Court cases which clearly state that parody is ok and is outside the framework of copyright infringement?
Then AP tries to “re-define” Fair Use. Gee wiz, where did they get their law degree? USC? University of Stupid Comedy?
Good take.
Interesting – I didn’t know about the drudge parody site.
I always considered drudge a parody of himself… so, this is many levels of parody.
How people can even look at http://www.drudgereport.com/ and not seizure is beyond me.
Off-point though.
Also, for the people saying there is a difference between Google quoting excerpts and bloggers quoting excerpts, I’d like to ask why? I view it as exactly the same thing.
It’s up to content providers to protect their content.
If a 16 year old blogger quotes from an AP article after finding it in dad’s morning paper, there’s nothing wrong with that.
If a 6 year old “robot” quotes an AP article after spidering the web for content and links to the full article, there’s nothing wrong with that.
Content providers have the responsibility of keeping up with technology and learning how to “protect” their content if they wish for it to be under lock and key.
Good job.
Down with the Media 1.0 companies. Long live the Media 2.0 companies. However, never forget; giants do not die easily.
Bravo.
This is the most commendable attempt I’ve read in a long time about fair use on the Internet. Not only does it supply accurate information, it also supplies a solution to the problem.
Bloggers should band together and boycott news articles from the AP.
Besides that, the AP is owned and operated by Rothschild family and wealth. So it wouldn’t surprise me that they’d stoop this low.
let’s see now, the AP has been around for decades reporting important news stories, breaking news and doing a stand up, important job, long before the internet came into being.
Techcrunch has been around for half an hour and reports on mostly useless web startups that do thing people don’t actually need while the creator of this site invests in the companies he reports on and pretends that doesn’t matter as long as hells people about it.
Don’t start talking ethics and standards when you have none sir, you look like an ass!
@emma
“let’s see now, the AP has been around for decades reporting important news stories, breaking news and doing a stand up, important job, long before the internet came into being.”
That’s an excuse to ignore law? Wow! I’ve been around for years, doing an important job. May I steal your TV now?
(The comparison with stealing a TV is a good one, copyright holders started to call downloading music “piracy” although piracy is actually a pretty bad crime, whereas downloading music is not.)
Doesn’t fair use cover this exact issue very clearly? These lawyers are simply trying to justify their billable hours. On that note, I will have to break some applications at work tomorrow — so I can spend three months fixing them.
Its all about Flat Earth Economics…..
http://broadstu...Fair-Usage.html
I’m a bit surprised by the tone of this debate.
why I agree that from a PR and possibly moral point of view, it is wrong for AP to sue bloggers, what about it from a legal angle? In your post, Michael, and in techdirt’s story I read that this was “clearly fair use”.
I strongly question that. This is 2008. Claiming that a behaviour is “fair use of copyright material” is a more and more fickle line of defense in a US court of law. The thing is, using copyrighted material without express consent or without univoquial terms of use is now risky no matter how ridiculous the offense may look to proponents of free speech.
content owners who expect that people talk about them should reexamine their copyright policy. and people who use content created by others should stop assuming that they are covered by fair use.
Silence?
I respect your attitude Michael but as a statement it’s just another piece of info that gets aggregated a zillion times. And AP is just another desperate dinosaur trying to change the rules of the game just before extinction. Like telecoms questioning net neutrality or big music companies still trying to avoid the inevitable. I need a voice to report about these matters, to speak up, to get mad (or happy). That’s why I read Techcrunch!
(also: Isn’t it true that the internet is like a hologram -”the whole being reflected in every facet”- I didn’t invent this metaphor but it’s holds some truth. How effective will a cordon sanitaire be in this system?)
Amen, comrade at arms.
I suggested here that the AP should learn from our ethic of quoting and linking: http://www.buzz...s-a-link-ethic/
And then they came out with their ridiculous view that we should conform to what they do: not quote but instead rewrite, run everything through the mill. They refuse to learn new ways. That is why they are dying and their industry with them. Pity.
Reuters, on the other hand, is trying to build a consumer business. It doesn’t complain about GoogleNews. It welcomes links. That’s the smart way.
AP just follow the footsteps of the music industry and the rest will follow.
There’s an old media maxim that strikes me as relevant here: publish and be damned.
Rather than banning AP, why not stand up for a principle? Why not, instead of actually acceding to their demands, make a point of (briefly) quoting and linking to more AP stories and really test their mettle? After all, if no laws are being broken, AP doesn’t have a leg to stand on. You’re a lawyer Mike, I’d have thought you’d relish the fight.
It seems to me with best way to respond to an unreasonable requirement is with reasonable non-compliance. They want to dictate the terms of fair use? Dare them to enforce it. Dare them to make their case in the courts.
Instead of encouraging bloggers to boycott the AP, Mike should be encouraging more of them to use AP quotes and sources. Flood the Internet with AP content, so long as it meets the legal definition of fair use. Which means you must “cite” the source, but it doesn’t require that you “link” to it.
If they sue a blogger, triple your use of their content. Take away what the AP’s perceived deterrent.
The problem with an AP boycott is that many other corporate media use the AP for their reports too. If it’s fair use, then it’s fair use and their lawyers will help them understand that when push comes to shove.
Of course the US common law doctrine of misappropriation (what AP is claiming is happening) originates in the 1918 Supreme Court opinion, featuring – you guessed it – the AP: International News Service v. Associated Press, 248 U.S. 215. Agree with boycotting AP as a source.
Debi – there’s a big problem with your approach – the A.P. is actually suing people (moreover, others). I won’t encourage people to fight the A.P. in a way that leads them into a court case that they can’t afford.
I agree with Mike, let them whither on the vine, also, I won’t read any of their stories, and sorry for the off topic, I will also remove roadrunner and any timewarner service. These draconians need off the internet–period.
@Michael Arrington
I agree that this is a situation where the AP shouldn’t be awarded with increasing traffic, but simply blended out of the internet traffic generation machine as much as possible.
I hope that Techmeme joins the AP ban, as well as other bloggers that cover topics where their stuff is useful.
This would also be a good opportunity for Yahoo to get back some Blogger’s love: Ban AP content!
Of course, Google could also join this effort, arguing that they are afraid of being sued, too.
Saying that they ask for links back to their properties when content is quoted is more than ok, but suing people for fair use is just plain dumb.
Come on AP, get over it, this isn’t France and ‘98 is so over!
The AP are insane. Agree completed, the AP doesn’t exist. If bloggers boycott the AP, their traffic is going to drop. Classic bite your nose to spite your face. These guys just don’t understand how the internet works.
If the AP doesn’t give me a million dollars this week, I’m suing them for.. uh… “unfairity”. Look AP, I can make up my own laws too!
Well put Mike. Screw the Ass(ociated) Press.
Woo hoo! How about a video of you smashing your teletype machine and ticker tape?
Oh and BAN ME TOO! BAN ME!
nice post.
Big media is so behind the times. When are these people going to wake up?
Though you guys are almost in lock-step: http://peek.snurl.com/2j5n4
[www_alexa_com]
“One of the earliest copyright disputes reputedly took place in 557 A.D. between Abbot Finnian of Moville and St. Columba over St. Columba’s copying of a Psalter belonging to an Abbot. The dispute over ownership of the copy led to the Battle of Cúl Dreimhne (also know as Battle of Cooldrumman), in which 3,000 men were killed”
damn copyright!