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?
So, we make up our own headlines and quote unnamed sources and make inferences, just like they do.
Read the original post at the top of this article. It points out that the moment you post a headline and an excerpt (assuming the excerpt retains the lede, which auto-excerpting does), you are posting something that AP charges its customers for--without paying for it yourself.
Why should other customers pay for something that FR gets for free?
Thanks for posting this Jim. This is a huge issue - a watershed moment in time for the “blogosphere” and the “new media”.
First, I will admit that I’m not an expert on these things. And, I would appreciate for people to correct me if I’m wrong in some of my thoughts that follow.
There are several things that are coming to my mind right now...
1.) The AP doesn’t write NEWS. According to their stance on this issue they provide a “product” which is tailored for their consumers. Claiming intellectual copyright on current events and such really goes against everything a Free Press stands for, IMHO. How can one copyright information that is available in various forms through a wide variety of sources? For instance, quotes from press conferences, information from press releases and official documents. They cannot pretend that they created the information that they are using.
The AP’s focus is profit, and keeping their clients happy. This PROVES that these types of news services do NOT have any interest whatsoever in true journalism. And, it should be viewed as an “entertainment” piece in the minds of the readers.
2.) If the AP is successful in this effort they will effectively be re-writing law. Fair use has already been decided in court cases like the one fought by Free Republic. I don’t see how they can propose these “regulations” honestly.
3.) I’m hoping that this watershed moment makes people sit up and take notice that the AP probably supplies a large majority of the news in our society. Their articles appear in so many forms, in so many places, that it’s virtually almost impossible for one to avoid reading their stuff. This is truly dangerous, IMHO. One “news” company is virtually in “control” of what makes it into the public’s mind, and directly influences the way people think and feel about certain subjects and issues. I just hope that through all of this people will start to realize that we are NOT receiving NEWS. We are receiving a controlled tailored writing product made by a company whose only real goal is profit. This is NOT what journalism is all about...
OK, I’m done “ranting”! LOL I’m very curious as to what the AP is going to dictate to us “little people”. I hope that somehow their monopoly will be destroyed by this, but I won’t hold my breath. I’ll just look for alternate sources for my information, and for what I share with my readers at my blog - it’ll probably be of a much higher quality anyway...
PS - Wouldn’t it be nice if the AP actually cited their sources for their “news” stories? One would probably be able to see really quickly that this is not THEIR intellectual property they are writing about, but information gathered by various sources - uncited sources at that. I wonder what would happen if the sources they use started charging THEM?
Now THAT's the spirit!!! :-) :-) :-)
...thus showing that information is transmitted, even if there’s not a whole news story.
No, there was NO news story from a syndicated news source, even the London authorities were not saying what the cause of the shut down was. They called it an accident. Mad Ivan was on there.
If that's true, why have they arbitrarily decided to charge $12.50 for ever word quoted over 4? I'd hate to be in school now writing a paper about current events.
AP messed up big time here.
Whenever AP used any of the stories I ever wrote, I always got a check from them, and my name and station call letters were also listed on the wire. Same thing with UPI.
Thanks E.
I’d like to see that list too... Funny that the first time I’ve heard of this guy or this association is with THIS case. I don’t care how important or “Famous” this guy thinks he is - he’s got a HUGE ego, and a LOT of audacity to claim to represent ALL bloggers...
If your source is cited, how is it stealing information? Especially if one derives no profit?
For instance, if someone writes a book, and using say 100 different sources for various information including a couple AP articles, uses footnotes, and a bibliography - are you going to contend that they STOLE all the information for their book?
This is ludicrous, IMHO.
The FR excerpt is linked to the full article which goes to a site with ADs that gets paid for hits.
Stick the Comrade comment.
Good to know. I’m guessing that your station already had a contract in place with both of these newswires though? Meaning that you had already given them the rights to republish your material at a set rate?
What if they called a press conference and nobody showed up?
What if nobody read an official document?
If you don't need the AP to get that information, then show up at the press conferences yourself, read the official documents yourself, get the press releases yourself, etc.
But if you expect someone else to go to a press conference, listen to a boring speech, sift through mind-dulling documents, ingratiate themselves to oily bureaucrats, winnow out the very few decent press releases from the stack you get daily, etc....then who pays for it? That's the conservative view.
It's astonishing to me that many FReepers fail to recognize that the news gatherers/reporters are providing a service...the AP is a cooperative of news outlets. Take it or leave it...that's our free choice, and FR has made a choice.
The AP’s focus is profit, and keeping their clients happy. This PROVES that these types of news services do NOT have any interest whatsoever in true journalism.
Well, you are free to start up a goodness-of-your-heart journalism network. I doubt you'll be very successful, so we must settle for that dirty capitalism thing again. :-) Sorry.
If the AP is successful in this effort they will effectively be re-writing law. Fair use has already been decided in court cases like the one fought by Free Republic. I don’t see how they can propose these “regulations” honestly.
They aren't regulations. Of course, if the blogosphere was as good at reporting as it claims, it might be clearer, but the AP would be setting fees for its work, and they could collect only by support of the law. How could they collect on Fair-Use cases?
I hope that somehow their monopoly will be destroyed by this, but I won’t hold my breath.
Rather than considering hypoventilation, how about taking the conservative approach and "push" for MORE competition, like you are "hoping" for.* Encourage independent newspapers, encourage reading, encourage decent fees for news to improve the product!
I’ll just look for alternate sources for my information
YES! though not "just" look for alternative sources...do it in addition to support for developing competing news cooperatives, etc.
I wonder what would happen if the sources they use started charging THEM?
A very fair question. And they do pay for their sources when there's a charge. Most newspapers have very small budgets for gathering such information now, though, so quality investigative reporting is difficult.
*I'll warn you, though...it's not easy to start a conservative newspaper. People are not nearly as interested in quality information as they claim.
That was obvious. But that's not the point.
See #79
A few weeks back the editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, on "On the Media", talked about how newspapers in Ohio were reaping great benefits trading material, and linking and cross linking. More importantly, she said she was no longer reliant on The Associated Press for her stories from the region but instead was getting the original versions direct from other sources around the state rather than paying “a big chunk” of her budget, about $1 million, for rewritten AP stories. Picking up directly, on the Web, and putting other papers’ stories directly in the newspaper was also better quality, she said, and readers were noticing:
“I mean, we've always had access to news from all over the state. It was just, you know, it went through the AP mill. I frankly think we're getting better, more distinctively written stories because they're not going through the AP mill.”
PS - I was thinking more along the lines of when they reword and publish press releases, though. (I’ve seen a lot of “one-sided” articles that are nothing more than that). It’s different when they pick up an article from a news partner, as there is already an established contract in those cases.
Yes, and it saddens me that there isn't more support for alternatives to the AP.
Thanks, Milhous. That’s very interesting - and just as I suspected about the level of quality. :)
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