June
16
A.P. vs. Blogosphere
A.P. is fighting against lefty social news site Drudge Retort (which according to the NYT started as a parody of the conservative Drudge Report), demanding that the site remove seven pieces containing short quotes from A.P. stories. And Michael Arrington at TechCrunch is banning A.P. from his blog until they change their policy. Jeff Jarvis is also pissed off.
This reveals yet another rift between content creators and content aggregators, between people who spend huge amounts of money reporting and providing news stories and those who list, borrow, rewrite, source, quote and pass on those stories. It happens to Variety all the time.
Arrington says A.P. should regard a post on the Digg-like Drudge Retort as a "gift."
What is A.P. really fighting against? How are their profits and livelihood threatened? A.P. is still the first story out--or is it? Bloggers are often getting there faster, cheaper, without the copyediting and factchecking and proofreading and legal concerns that plague the "real media." And they're grabbing eyeballs---the numbers that feed advertising revenue.
Here's a bit from the NYT story:
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.
Am I quoting more than I should here? Is this fair use? Or am I infringing on the NYT's livelihood? Is this OK because I am commenting on the story, as opposed to just posting it? My approach has been: provide the link, which invites someone to go to the source; but quote a bit from the piece too. Am I publicizing them, which is good, or ripping them off, which is bad? We have not heard the last of this debate.
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i believe this is constitutional law 101. if the user cites the source, has an opinion regarding the content, and the use is education/editorial it's 'fair usage' and considered protected under copyright law (u.s. code, etc). as such, fair usage of copyrighted material represents freedom of speech and freedom of the press
the only subjective matter is in regard to how much of, what proportion of, the original material is cited. using all of it would be suspect.
if you couldn't do this type of story w/o obtaining permissions and paying licensing fees for citing excerpts and bits and pieces we would not have a free society
if copyrights were absolutely enforced most of the internet would shut down. even a totally legit service like google news would be in violation, to say nothing of sites like youtube.
if that were the case you might be found to be violating copyright law if you said "the nyt has a story about (xx content) in which they say (describe)."
it's a long-held truth: the press keeps societies free. without free exchange of ideas there is no freedom of speech, or freedom of the press. w/o fair usage we don't have free exchange of ideas.
the mainstream producers of content should be thankful for blog posts that cite their material. a good example would be the posting of movie trailers on blogs. this does nothing but bring in revenue for the studio/distributor of the movie.
i produce content. if you want to cite it and credit me as being the producer, and say it's good or bad or whatever, go ahead. that's fair usage. if you want to cut/paste it and call it your own and sell it, that's copyright infringement.
i don't see how it takes a degree in law to understand this. AP is just having problems with the new abilities of the internet that allow people to speak their minds about what's in the news. they'll have to live with it.
if today, you're shutting down blogs for citing nyt or ap or whomever, tomorrow you're shutting down nyt or ap or whomever.
AP is seeking to censor someone. if that was allowed it wouldn't be too long before AP was censored. state-run press would be the next step and free speech would become an underground pastime indulged in only at risk of arrest. the briefest most superficial review of history will bear this out. (i don't think it would be difficult to find editors at AP or NYT or wherever who would agree with this thinking)
fair usage is one of the pillars of a free society. if the producers of content want to continue to have the freedom to distribute such content, they have to allow fair usage of their material. you can't suppress the voice of one part of society without putting at risk the freedom of speech of society as a whole
Posted by: Alan | June 16, 2008 at 11:29 AM
wait a minute. here's msnbc.com quoting a blogger. is this copyright infringement?
from: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25179450/
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Joel Madden starts his own rumors
As if frequent tabloid rumors predicting wedding bells for Joel Madden and Nicole Richie weren’t enough, the Good Charlotte frontman used his blog to start one of his own.
AND
“HAHA, JUST KIDDING,” Joel wrote. “So I feel really stupid even posting this, but I’ve been getting calls and texts from my family all week asking me why they weren't invited to my wedding. I guess the only answer I could give them was that I didn’t know we were having one.”
From there the rocker shifted the blame where it belonged. “Its just star magazine,” he explained. “How long do you think it will be before they write we called it off, or we broke up? I give them a week or two…”
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now the shoe is on the other foot. perhaps someone should demand that msnbc.com remove this content. alternatively, maybe msnbc.com should demand that i not tell you that they quoted a blogger (since, by doing so, i am citing material authored by and owned by msnbc.com). perhaps msnbc.com should demand that this post be removed immediately
Posted by: Alan | June 16, 2008 at 11:51 AM