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?
Lots of blogs are calling for boycotts of AP content. Not me. I'm going to keep using it. I will copy and paste as many words as I feel necessary to make my points and that I feel are within bounds of copyright law (and remember, I've got a JD and specialized in media law, so I know the rules pretty well). And I will keep doing so if I get an AP takedown notice (which I will make a big public show of ignoring). And then, either the AP -- an organization famous for taking its members work without credit -- will either back down and shut the hell up, or we'll have a judge resolve the easiest question of law in the history of copyright jurisprudence.
And it has been good to see you filling in some of the details of how the compensation works, and especially how the ol' Press Release game is played at some places!
I write an article for the local paper, which is an independent, but does have a contractual relationship with AP. AS part of my contract, [...]
I'm not a lawyer, and I haven't looked at an AP agreement in ages (never been a member of AP, either, and I spit on their Style Manual ;-), so I could only speculate.
Look, for example, at the WaPo notice: "The Associated Press is entitled exclusively to use for republication of all news dispatches credited to it or not otherwise credited in this paper and all local news of spontaneous origin published herein."
Depending on what you write, it could be that you would be cutting into the exclusivity clause for the AP--perhaps the independent paper would have to be sure that your permission to publish on FR didn't conflict. (Is the story "local news of spontaneous origin" or what?)
If the AP agreement allowed such deals as you describe, then what would prevent a paper from giving blanket permission for reprinting to everyone--reducing their potential contribution to the AP collective?
IOW, IMO, it's very complex.
The problem is when people start using FR as a news source, not for the purpose of "...as I feel necessary to make my points..." and "...that I feel are within bounds of copyright law..."
Then their "case" (legal or business one), however bad it is now, is in even deeper doo-doo:
1. Headlines for the same [and edited from the same "base"] articles may be different depending on publication.
2. News headlines, just like titles of the books and movies cannot be copyrighted, they are exempt.
Exactly!
Nothing I have ever done for that paper was really worthy of posting here, it was really THAT local. LOL!
That press release crapola drives me insane..and I haven't worked in a news room in over 20 years, and it was done back that. Granted, I was in small market radio and we had shoestring budgets and staff, but it is so very obvious to me whn I see it being done on the national level.
I worked with a great AP regional guy for about 3 years. He trusted me to back up whatever I fed him. One evening he calls me and starts ripping me a new one about a fatal fire story that I had "written." Oh I had written the story, because I had been on the scene, but no where in any of my coverage had I mentioned the name of the victim as it wasn't official, also I never called AP with the story. While he was chewing me out for being irresponsible and I was trying to explain the Fire Chief came storming in to chew me out for the exact same thing because my AP guy had called him to confirm.
Long story short, the owner of the station had taken my copy, added a sentence with the victims name and called AP and gave me the credit for the story.
It took an awful lot of work for me to regain the trust of those 2 men, for something I had not done.
22 years later the memory of that fiasco still stings. AP was far more trustworthy back then.
If AP doesn’t back down, and soon, whether due to boycott (there really are other news sources and NEWS doesn’t need to be “quoted”, “cut-and-paste”, just retold and not necessarily with the gist AP wanted to put on it, which will only harm AP) or by legal decision (they are chartered to provide NEWS, not literary works), they may be unwittingly backing themselves into a corner of “monopoly” and just may need to be broken up...
Who will be next Judge Green?
Note that however valid your points are for copyright issues, this is not necessarily a direct copyright-violation issue (though, again, IANAL). Misappropriation doctrine is a separate issue, and so the headline-copyright exemption doesn't apply. Though the NBA v. Motorola case weakened the issue somewhat, I don't think the factors mentioned in that case are applicable to provide cover for AP headline misappropriation claims.
As to your first point, the basic premise of INS v. AP seems to have been held through the more recent revisions in the law. That is, regardless of the wording, the information conveyed can be protected under the "hot news" doctrine.
Note, however, that I'm not an expert in this, and I have not been involved in the AP negotiations, etc.
Then, from the other side...
Since being in the newsroom, I was sometimes called upon by employers to help with press releases. Golly-gee, we'd get the info run when I wrote them.
Then we got a new VP who insisted on seeing my releases...and then re-writing them. I was so embarrassed by what he came up with, I couldn't bear to send them out. Whenever I did bring myself to get them out, we'd get no coverage. Did he ever then realize it was perhaps him? Nope...no clue. No wonder he advanced so fast! ;-)
Granted, I was in small market radio
I'm curious...was that in Delaware?
and we had shoestring budgets and staff,
Ain't THAT the truth. And people wonder why they can't get good news coverage..when they aren't willing to pay for it! When full-time, college-graduate reporters and editors qualify for foodstamps even after 5 years of experience, it's tough on good staff.
I believe you’ll find that quite unlikely.
This doesn't even fall under Fair Use of Copyright Law, it doesn't pass the Copyright test - you can't copyright book or movie titles, or headlines:
http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-protect.html
Their business case doesn't make sense, but if they want to commit electronic suicide or do anything else "digital" (in anal-og sense) to themselves, who are we to stop them?
What's even worse for them that they have no legal case here, they are violating the same Copyright laws they supposedly try to "enforce"!
It's pure harassment by big bully which will be over because NOBODY will stand for this outrage - not righties with boycotts which will hurt AP affiliates, not lefties which have resources and will gladly dispose of AP after being taken to court, nor their affiliates who they supposedly are trying to "protect" after they lose traffic and ad revenue. So the only question is how soon it will be over and how bad it will turn out for AP in the end?
Been there, done that. I so completely understand, having been placed in that same awkward position myself.
I'm curious...was that in Delaware?
Delaware and Maryland.
Ain't THAT the truth.
Yup. My gross pay was $833 a month when I started and because I was in the news department I was considered salary and thus no overtime.......but heaven forbid if I didn't put in an 8 hour day, even if I had done 16 the day before. When the Legislature was in session I was in the newsroom at 8am, on the air from 9-1 and then head for the capitol, be back around 8 or 9pm and write til about 11 and start all over the next day. But come Friday, I best not be thinking about leaving before 4.
I was young and dumb, single, and it was what I wanted to do, so I put up with the long hours and the BS. I'm none of those things anymore........
It has been a long day, and even though I'm not heading for a news room in the morning, I do need to call it a night, I have corn and beans to plant tomorrow and two 10 year olds to keep track of, and hopefully get them to do as they promised and get the corn and beans planted.
Nice chatting with you, will check back in the morning. Good night.
Almost the same with doctrine of "hot news", it's a print version of the law, dating to World War I.
"AP reports that ..." need not have a subscriber to AP read it on the air - again, "misappropriation" and "hot news" are covered by attribution.
I think that's the problem with AP's legal case on this issue, notwithstanding that their business case is completely nuts - they are trying to apply ancient print news media rules to "ether" - they truly live in the past. It's like watching TV on analog set with rabbit ears analog antena after February 2009. But they had better hope they lose the legal cases, or their business will experience significant shrinkage. Monetizing "news" has never been easy, they are trying to go about it in entirely bull-headed way.
Bill AP for the advertising costs.
Since any mention of AP is a form of advertising.
In fact, I’m going to bill AP for merely mentioning AP six times in the course of an AP thread.
:-P
(My advertising and product placement rates are $875.34 per placement. Also, I have a fuel surcharge of $75.00 and a miscelleous fee charge of $12.43.)
AP, time to pay up!
I say banish AP for good because of this non-sense. If they want to go down the RIAA low road, then let them do it alone.
Well, good for him!
You miss the point that FR seems to have a deal with those media outlets regarding excerpting or headline only. It’s up to THEM, to protect AP or whoever their reporting comes from, don’t you think?
We used to issue press releases when I worked with a local charitable organization because we knew the press would use the material, generally without rewriting it.
It was cheap insurance against being horribly misquoted or having facts garbled by a new reporter in a local market, especially with a paper which was notorious for getting things mixed up.
They liked us because we made them look better (more accurate), and it worked for us.
I agree totally with you and took advantage of the situation often. But press releases from charitable groups are not what I’m complaining about. That’s non-controversial stuff and generally more for public service purposes and filler than for direct “news.”
I was referring to things like press releases from, say PETA, about “inhumane” practices at some processing plant. The press release gets printed or read on the news verbatim ad by the time someone from the plant gets up with someone the damage is already done.
That’s the kind of stuff I’m talking about, and it happens very often with any kind of controversial issue where supposedly “everyone knows” so there is no point in seeking the other side of the issue.
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