The Associated Press, one of the nation’s largest news organizations, said that it will, for the first time, 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.
The A.P.’s effort to impose some guidelines on the free-wheeling blogosphere, where extensive quoting and even copying of entire news articles is common, may offer a prominent definition of the important but vague doctrine of “fair use,” which holds that copyright owners cannot ban others from using small bits of their works under some circumstances. For example, a book reviewer is allowed to quote passages from the work without permission from the publisher.
Fair use has become an essential concept to many bloggers, who often quote portions of articles before discussing them. The A.P., a cooperative owned by 1,500 daily newspapers, including The New York Times, provides written articles and broadcast material to thousands of news organizations and Web sites that pay to use them.
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.”
On Friday, The A.P. issued a statement defending its action, saying it was going to challenge blog postings containing excerpts of A.P. articles “when we feel the use is more reproduction than reference, or when others are encouraged to cut and paste.” An A.P. spokesman declined Friday to further explain the association’s position.
After that, however, the news association convened a meeting of its executives at which it decided to suspend its efforts to challenge blogs until it creates a more thoughtful standard.
tRoublE has become unaVOidabLe betweenst the natUral born compeTItOrs for the ear of the publik. perhaps it is best. perhaps coNflict cannot be avoided at this point. let the war of words begin.
Credit the source and C – YA.
Besides, dailies will end up as blogs soon enough….half of the NYT’s writers (and those of the RNO, WP, and Baltimore Sun for that matter) NEED the excuse of, "I didn’t have time to fact-check because it’s a blog." And perhaps also, "I know "it’s" is the wrong spelling for the possessive form – blame my blogging software!"
in mho, it’s all there for the taking, as long as you credit the source. i try to pull out small sections that i think are most relevant, but i often post most or all of a story.
to me, the link is the critical action.
I’m one to just use a paragraph or two. This isn’t really because of fair use, more because I like shorter bites that people can then choose to click on for more.
I think fair use means that, generally, one takes just a pinch and sends folks to the source. Unless one is using long excerpt as part of an even longer exegesis of some sort, then shorter bits are probably more polite.
So, does that mean the AP will quit lifting sections of newspapers, BBC, AFP, Al Jazerra and others in their articles?
I agree.
Fuck em, let them rot with other web 0.99 entities.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/6/16/145135/241
Check out for an update on this topic.
Eh, so, don’t use them. Leave them all alone and unlinked to in their quiet, happy place in an undisclosed location on the internet, if that’s what they want. They’re not the only source of news. Just the easiest. Nothing like a few months of listening to nothing but crickets chirping to make them rethink this whole "don’t touch me" routine.