Associated Press to Charge Bloggers Fee for Citing as Few as 5 Words from AP Articles

[sgunelius]

I didn't see this news bit posted yet. The AP threatened to sue bloggers last week for citing as few as 8 words from AP articles. This week, they announced a new fee schedule that will charge bloggers for citing as few as 5 words from AP articles.

You can get the details here:

http://www.marketingblurb.com/2008/06/associated_press_to_charge_blo.html

 

[Tirjasdyn]

They're shooting themselves in the foot. Long live the paraphrase!

I didn't see this news bit posted yet. The AP threatened to sue bloggers last week for citing as few as 8 words from AP articles. This week, they announced a new fee schedule that will charge bloggers for citing as few as 5 words from AP articles.

You can get the details here:

http://www.marketingblurb.com/2008/06/associated_press_to_charge_blo.html

 

[June Casagrande]

The New York Times explains it very differently.

NYT says that AP sent a letter to a blog telling them to take down some citations, including ones as short as 38 words. But then the AP backed off its request.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/16/b...=associated+press+bloggers&st=nyt&oref=slogin

AP doesn't get to decide how many words are fair use. They get to decide how many words they think are fair use before they call their lawyers. Ultimately, it's up to a judge. But at the moment it looks like it won't go that far anyway.

I sincerely doubt any of us will be paying to reprint six words of AP stories anytime soon.

 

[razibahmed]

I used to admire AP as a reliable news source and I used to give link to them and quote (40-100 words) from them. Now, I have totally stopped doing so because of this new rule of AP. Linking to their stories means that bloggers accept them as a reliable source. It’s not that by quoting 50-100 words of an AP story, I or any blogger are stealing any money from them. Instead, many people visit the original story from blogs. If they don’t like my free appreciation, I am fine with that.

 

[veinglory]

I quote AP a lot. I try to make sure my quote is less than 10% (preferably less than 5%) of the whole piece and have a direct link. Fair use is fuzzy though.

 

[L M Ashton]

I can understand why they did this. There are a lot of people who will quote entire news articles, not snippets, and that is not fair use IMO unless the article is very short, like under 50 words. But then, there are a lot of people who will also quote whole song lyrics, whole poems, and so on. And this isn't a problem just with bloggers, but also in forum posts and elsewhere on the Internet.

Having said that, though, I think they've gone overboard in this.

 

[razibahmed]

The bloggers are annoyed because AP did not go after forum posters or those people who just give a link and copy paste the entire entry. AP ran after bloggers and that is why so many bloggers are upset.

 

[MovieBlogger]

While this is annoying, look at it from another angle. What if someone was taking your content and running a site with it?

I was looking around some links recently and found another site that regularly takes some of my posts and passes it off as their own. I'm not getting paid for that.

There are a lot of blogs that are NOTHING but links to other sites, with no "reporting" of their own. That is what the AP was objecting to. They were running a site based entirely on AP's content.

I can understand WHY they are doing it, but the way they are going about it is wrong.

 

[queenofthegeeks]

The AP is so cute. I've known writers to have issues with them before this.

That being said, I can't remember quoting the AP. I'd rather quote Mad Magazine.

 

[razibahmed]

No one is supporting stealing content here. They were surely not “running a site based entirely on AP's content.” I am quoting from New York Times report:
“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.”
……………………………
“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.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/16/business/media/16ap.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

Why not go after Digg or other big social news sites instead of Drudge Retort? Users in Drudge Report submit links and quotations from many websites, not just from AP. Here, in Absolute Write Forum, I just copy pasted 90+ words from a NY Times report. I did it only for the sake of discussion and in no way, I can earn even one cent from this.
AP officials have become successful in bringing bad publicity for their organization and they are now trying to find a way out.

 

[benbradley]

They're shooting themselves in the foot. Long live the paraphrase!

Hmm, I'm wondering if there's any way a blogger could get around this.

Associated Press to Charge...
see next entry for more.

 

[benbradley]

...Bloggers Fee for Citing...

 

[soma]

Hmm, I'm wondering if there's any way a blogger could get around this.

Associated Press to Charge...
see next entry for more.

You don't have to get around it. I say, if they want to argue that a passage that short isn't covered by fair use, let them bloody well try. Any copyright lawyer worth his license will get them laughed right out of court (and yes, I've had my legal contacts corroborate me on this).

 

[Georganna Hancock]

If you look at the issue from the AP point of view, it must draw the line somewhere, and to start somewhere enforcing standards. Of course it might play out in a courtroom, but more likely a settlement will be negotiated with a less stringent requirement.

I can understand why the AP would not want the most delicious item in a story spread around the Internet. It dilutes the value of the services the AP provides to paying customers.

I seldom quote any wire service story. It's easy enough to find a publication that has used the wire copy and to quote it. The wire services have very clear copyright statements and processes for obtaining a license to copy their works.

Bloggers who violate others' copyrights drag down the reputations of all bloggers, IMHO.

 

[Ava Jarvis]

If you look at the issue from the AP point of view, it must draw the line somewhere, and to start somewhere enforcing standards.

I think most people are fine with that---if there's anybody who doesn't like content copying, it's the serious bloggers (and it happens to them all the time).

They just aren't fine with the line that was drawn, which pretty much rules out using AP quotes at all.

Hmmm. Actually, that was probably the intent. In which case they should have just gone for zero.

 

[AZ_Dawn]

Midwest
cement
Larry
water
harrowing
open
Muench
soybeans
federal

I quoted these words from an AP story about the Midwest floods. Let's see them make an infringement case out of that!

 

[benbradley]

You don't have to get around it. I say, if they want to argue that a passage that short isn't covered by fair use, let them bloody well try. Any copyright lawyer worth his license will get them laughed right out of court (and yes, I've had my legal contacts corroborate me on this).

Ahem... maybe I'm being taken too seriously, perhaps because this isn't Office Party, but...

It was a joke.

 

[benbradley]

I think most people are fine with that---if there's anybody who doesn't like content copying, it's the serious bloggers (and it happens to them all the time).

They just aren't fine with the line that was drawn, which pretty much rules out using AP quotes at all.

Hmmm. Actually, that was probably the intent. In which case they should have just gone for zero.

I can see the story now:

"In a bold move involving copyright infringement against bloggers, and claiming zero tolerance for even the possibility of very short "fair use" quotes, The Associated Press today has made itself irrelevant."

Hold on, I've got my very own publishing venue in my sigline...

ETA: and I'm too late by just an hour getting on this bandwagon:
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5i8cihESZPorud4s0xoDt3vdsrGBgD91E1M0G0

 

[DonnaDuck]

For, The, It, He, She

Am I in hot water now? Five words is asinine and just plain ridiculous. I doubt that'll hold any water.