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 APs guidelines. And what might those guidelines be? Hes 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 wont reveal the details of this discussion until AP releases the guidelines for bloggers that it promised on Monday
If APs guidelines end up like the ones they shared with me, were headed for a Napster-style battle on the issue of fair use
Although AP will be releasing guidelines, I dont 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 theres 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 thats the main guideline, plus whatever reasonable excerpt length they suggest (two or three paragraphs?), it wont be terribly burdensome for bloggers, but like Cadenhead suggests, theyre 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 youre 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?
Some folks really need the /sarcasm tag.
Some need a sense of humor, I’d say.
No need to try again, since the statement you just made is obviously false.
Is there a humor tag?
/humor
Yes, and their contention that they were the first with credentials is also wrong.
I have no doubt that the Ass. Press won't back off, but while it would probably be a slam-dunk to pull FR and you into court for that first violation I suspect it will likely be one of the "social" news-sites -- the ones that breathlessly hang on every publicists pronouncement of the latest dirt. And in that they may indeed have a point, after all there was and is valid reason for copyright on fiction. Once they have that case in hand, combined with the FR stipulations, the Web becomes bereft of valid discourse and political discernment.
Political speech is different. Granted, they send their people all over at some expense in order to gather the story. But the First Amendment was crafted to ensure Political Speech belongs to the People, not the one with the deepest pockets. Try getting into any House or Senate press conference. You can't -- you're not "a member of the 'Press Corps'" and your citizenship rights do not apply.
I think I remarked that we would rue the day that you were forced to knuckle under to WaPo and LaSlimes back then -- that day is now much, much, closer, and my ongoing tagline remains true.
Links go to the full article. Not to an excerpt.
I’m not sure why this wasn’t obvious to you.
Mad Ivan lives in London.
Ig pay atin lay isn’t funny?
The FR excerpt is linked to the full article.
Posters on FR do not “steal” information, that’s a rather nasty generalization btw. The mods require links to all articles except, of course, for vanities. In most cases, AP articles are excerpted because of restrictions by the sources; WP, CT, LAT, etc. When excerpts are posted, freepers have to click on the link to read the entire article. We give them more hits than they would normally get because we click on the excerpt link to read the rest of the artice.
That will no longer happen, per Jim, AP articles, excerpts or quotes over 4 words are no longer welcome on FR. (That should be interesting.)
July 7, 2006, I woke up in the middle of the night and for some odd reason went to my computer and turned on Free Republic. There were big headlines on the first post, that the London tube had been hit by a terrorist bombing. The thread was about fifteen minutes old, no other news source had it yet, and my son, who was waiting impatiently at the train station in London, had no idea what the delay was. He was late because he overslept, and it was his last day of his internship. I was able to reach him by cell phone before he even left the station. He had no idea of what was going on, but I did because Mad Ivan knew and posted it on Free Republic, that fast. I have no idea how Mad Ivan even knew because they weren’t saying what the problem was in London, yet. All they said was that they were closing the trains, please go home.
Step 1 If a word begins with one or more consonants, move the consonant or consonant cluster to the end of the word.
Step 2 Add the letters “ay” to the end of the word. So “pig” would be “igpay,” “porker” would be “orkerpay,” and “swine” would be “inesway.”
Step 3 Simply add the letters “ay” to the end of the word if it begins with a vowel. Thus “animal” becomes “animal-ay.”
Tips & Warnings
A pig latinism is a pair of words, one in English and the other its pig latin translation, in which the pig latin translation has a meaning in English. Examples are “trash” and “ashtray,” as well as “beast” and “East Bay.”
The language varies regionally, so don’t be surprised if you hear “way,” “hay,” or even “yay” tacked onto the end of a word, especially if the word in question begins with a vowel. Thus “oink” could be “oink-way,” “oink-hay,” or “oink-yay.”
not AP, but close.
.
Yes, but by posting the excerpt and headline, you have already put up there--for free--what some of their customers pay for.
I know the idea of free sharing on the 'net is fun, Comrade, but without kapitolistic profits, what incentive is there for news gathering?
The answer to this is that we should be paying for news reporting services, all of us, but that more competition be introduced by formation of competing ventures.
The AP is merely a cooperative of member news organizations who agree to share their material. Meanwhile, independent bloggers who conduct primary reporting could sell their material to the AP (as Michelle Malkin implied)...or form their own news cooperatives.
Also, note that the AP's statement was that they were after cases outside of Fair Use:
when we feel the use is more reproduction than reference, or when others are encouraged to cut and paste.
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