Posted on 06/20/2008 2:39:21 PM PDT by Jim Robinson
No money changed hands but Rogers Cadenhead, who owns the Retort, evidently agreed to tweak the offending posts to bring them into compliance with the AP’s guidelines. And what might those guidelines be? He’s not saying. Yet.
I spent around two hours yesterday talking to AP attorneys about their specific objections to the user blog entries in dispute, going line by line through the text to pinpoint exactly where they have intellectual property concerns in the short excerpts that were posted. I won’t reveal the details of this discussion until AP releases the guidelines for bloggers that it promised on Monday…
If AP’s guidelines end up like the ones they shared with me, we’re headed for a Napster-style battle on the issue of fair use…
Although AP will be releasing guidelines, I don’t think the news service will be able to concede any ground to the blogosphere. AP sells headline and lead-only services to customers. Asking the company to concede there’s a way people can share this information for free is like asking the RIAA to pick its favorite file-sharing client.
The post on the settlement at the Media Bloggers Association corroborates that the AP drew the line at excerpting the headline and the lede paragraph, since “a large percentage of the value of what they deliver is carefully packaged in that content and so the publishing of that information without permission was a copyright violation.” If that’s the main guideline, plus whatever reasonable excerpt length they suggest (two or three paragraphs?), it won’t be terribly burdensome for bloggers, but like Cadenhead suggests, they’re going to end up in court anyway thanks to the thousands of user-driven bulletin board news-sharing sites online. AP headlines and ledes are probably copied verbatim a few dozen times a day at Free Republic and Democratic Underground alone. Add in Digg, Reddit, etc etc etc, and you’re looking at a galaxy of lawsuit opportunities. Exit question: Which lucky website will find itself the bearer of the golden ticket to federal district court?
As far as I remember it was a standard part of the contract with them, our corporate paid the wire services for content and they paid for our content, but corporate didn’t take that payment, the individual news people got that money.
None of us ever could figure out the rate at which they paid but every so many weeks each of us in the newsroom got a check from the wire services.
Thanks for taking the time to cut apart my rant. :) I do recognize that there is work involved in reporting. I may not have done it professionally, but honest-to-goodness reporting is HARD when you care about what you write. (I was an editor for my High School newspaper, and a reporter before that - it wasn’t a bird cage liner though - the paper and our reporters won a lot of national awards “back in the day”. ;))
What I don’t understand though - and maybe it’s my idealistic feelings getting in the way - is why in the world would the AP want to stifle the flow of information. As many have pointed out - when one links to an AP article their clients (whomever is hosting the info.) is making a profit. That provides incentive for these outlets to continue using the AP’s information. It just seems a little backwards to me. Blogs are not papers. They are mostly editorial pages, honestly.
Now, I will definitely seek ways to support competition for the AP. And, I do realize that there is a need for papers to make a profit - otherwise what would the incentive be? I’m really not “anti-capitalist”! LOL
However, I would just LOVE for there to be a few more real, old-fashioned, journalists out there who were more concerned about unbiased reporting (i.e. both sides of the story and let the reader decide for themselves). I know some still exist, but it seems like they are a rare breed nowadays.
Given how poorly structured most news stories are today, if they do end up prohibiting the use of the first paragraph, that generally won’t be much of a loss.
Banning all AP content is the safest course at this point.
Time for somebody to start a site offshore that quotes AP articles word for word.
But post them totally unsourced.
Time for the Dino media to adjust. Actually, FR is a good model, because except for the Freepathons, we are not bombarded by advertising and media overblitz!
Even with DSL, I swear some of these sites take over a minute to load. Ridiculous!
Thanks for sharing that. Very interesting. :) I’m learning a lot on this thread! I love that... It’s the BEST thing about FR, IMHO. The discussions are always fascinating on virtually any subject. It’s the discussion that keeps me coming back here day after day! ;)
AP headlines and ledes are probably copied verbatim a few dozen times a day at Free Republic and Democratic Underground alone. Add in Digg, Reddit, etc etc etc, and you're looking at a galaxy of lawsuit opportunities. Exit question: Which lucky website will find itself the bearer of the golden ticket to federal district court?If it isn't enforced by AP against all websites, might it not open up a trojan horse legalism undermining any restriction? Further, can AP legally require something in excess of the protections under Fair Use? Or is that what is at issue here? Thanks Jim.
Half the articles they pick up from their news partners are nothing more than rewritten press releases. I can’t tell you how many times over the years I’ve sent out press releases and never got a call from any news outlet I sent it to, yet lo and behold there was a story on the air or in the paper about that press release. With a byline from the reporter at the local paper.
Personally it didn’t bother me because I issued a press release for publicity and I got it. What really irks me though is when they write a story from a press release on a subject they know nothing about and don’t contact the person responsibile or contact someone with an opposing view.
That habit of ine drove one “news director” I had absolutely nuts. He was a “rip n’ read” type and I was more interested in facts.
Maybe CBS had to pull it because it violated AP’s policy. ;’) ;’) ;’D
Truly the meaning of the first amendment.
We are just like those guys meeting in some brick townhouse 250 years ago, with a smoky fire in the background and maybe a glass of ale. Discussing the Queen, and the French, and the territories, and the hopes and dreams of the farmers and blacksmiths that live next door.
We’re just not all in the same place, physically.
But it’s the same spirit!
You contended...
No one knows who this guy is [...]
He's known by many as a right-wing nutcase who is self-aggrandizing and trying to get money and speak for others. Others see him as someone trying to found an organization that can provide some strength of voice for the generally disunified blogging community. But unknown, he is not.
You know what’s kind of funny - nowadays it’s the second paragraph that usually gets into the “5W’s and an H” (if even then)! Most of the 1st paragraphs are cute little segues that are usually highly editorialized.
Yep, it does have that feeling doesn’t it? Maybe good things can come from this - I’m thinking of a mantra now -
INDEPENDENCE FROM FOSSIL MEDIA, NOW!
Could it be that he has already gotten his money up front? By the way..you are the first person on FR to relay that they know anything about this person. Thanks for sharing. Got any more info on him?
I assume JimRob we can still post Reuter articles. Is that correct?
This is to stop Blogging. They are finding ways to control the Right since they can’t get legislation passed to curtail bloggers. Their lawyers have found a way through Copyright to nip bloggers in the bud.
The only way if for the bloggers, the right to set up their own news wire source.
This was going to eventually take place since the Right has allowed the left to own “ALL” of the major news networks and wire services.
(Shaking head) Many of us have begged for consortiums to be put together to buy out certain entities only to be pushed aside. Now we have this problem.
Remember, without Fox and the Internet we have NO say.
Doesn't matter if nobody profits, as long as you diminish profits of others.
For instance, if someone writes a book,[...]
You're leaving out the timing element. This is in reference to news information, so the "hot news" misappropriation doctrine comes into play. In your book example, it doesn't.
Misappropriation isn't the same as copyright infringement...that's a separate (though possibly relevant) issue.
Disclaimer: IANAL.
I don't think I'm the first...after all, you initially replied to someone else who had provided info on him :-)
Thanks for sharing. Got any more info on him?
You're welcome.
I'd say you should just do some searches and you'll find various claims...you can make up your own mind from there. :-)
The media aren't the problem...it's that we have too few of them. The guys in the smoky brick townhouse would say we should be founding more newspapers, not tearing them down.
"...were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter." --Thomas Jefferson
Actually...we already have one of sorts. All we really need is more international news posted.
I agree - I should’ve added the LOL or /sarc... It was just a play on words with the liberal mantra of fossil fuels. :)
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