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?
I know, it's unfathomable they don't see this? They're going to end up just like the record industry, absolutely killing their sales. Because of their asinine politics they are going to allow without realizing it new news services to take their place.
Dumbasses!
Sounds like Metallica.
...thus you support the AP’s point.
We can hope. Good primary reporting is difficult to obtain.
Free Republic did not copyright that report, neither did the poster. I don’t get your point.
I say maybe we should re-write the headline in pig latin.
For instance the current headline could read:
APa ettleSa opyrightCa aimCla ithWa udgeDra eportRa
Why would that matter, based on the substance of the contention?
From the, "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." it appears that they will not even allow exact titles to be quoted. If Cadenhead's take is right there HAS to be a Fair Use battle.
As far as the "lead only" service he is talking about. I don't think that is anything at FR. Every AP story linked I have seen goes to a full article.
Look at the bottom of every thread on FR.
“Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.”
Jim, you should put a small type notice on each thread, post, or page that assures people keep this ALWAYS on their minds.
How is that I support the AP’s point? Mad Ivan reported the facts before the AP even had a clue.
I fully support your position on this Jim, but I have a question that I haven't seen yet addressed on many of the different threads on this issue (my apologies if I missed it)
If I post a story from my local TV station's website, that was done by a local reporter and the AP later picks it up, does the original story from the TV, not AP, then have to be pulled?
It sounds similar to how it was illegal for an East-Coast news organization to read competing newspapers and then wire info to the West Coast, where they published it (in their own words)--often "scooping" the original news organization's West-Coast papers that were published later in the day.
It's the stealing of information that the reporters have gathered, and the anti-capitalist, chilling effect of trying to remove incentives from gathering news is more like something from DU than FR, I would think.
Now, if FR paid for information that was gathered, then it's a fair capitalist deal. Or if FR decides not to pay, then it's fair.
If the former, then it's not a problem...but it does support AP's point that information is transmitted even when a full story isn't.
You've never seen an excerpted article?!?
If they were still an organization that works on some kind of realistic principle, like so many still believe that the NYtimes operates on a business principle, then your theory would make sense. But actually their ultimate goal is the death of capitalism, even if it means their own death. It's like they are the suicide bombers of the news industry. Fanatics make no real sense to the rest of us.
Can’t trust those dang conservatives, eh?
No one knows who this guy is or how he became God of the bloggers...care to try again?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.