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AP to Charge for 5 Word Quotations
by Jarrett Martineau | June 17, 2008 at 06:42 am | 3137 views | 20 comments
by politisite
I woke up this morning thinking about the AP's move to establish "quotation guidelines" for bloggers, but came into the office only to discover that it's already happened!
And, if you can wrap your mind around this, the AP expects you to pay for quoting five words from one of its articles.
That's right: 5 words.
As an added bonus, they're also offering a $1 million reward if you're willing to snitch on your fellow bloggers for forwarding an email to you that quotes from an AP article.
Kiss "fair use" goodbye, my friends!
Thankfully, Cory Doctorow's around to drop some science on this ridiculousness:
In the name of "defin[ing] clear standards as to how much of its articles and broadcasts bloggers and Web sites can excerpt" the Associated Press is now selling "quotation licenses" that allow bloggers, journallers, and people who forward quotations from articles to co-workers to quote their articles. The licenses start at $12.50 for quotations of 5-25 words. The licensing system exhorts you to snitch on people who publish without paying the blood-money, offering up to $1 million in reward money (they also think that "fair use" -- the right to copy without permission -- means "Contact the owner of the work to be sure you are covered under fair use.").
Welcome to a world in which you won’t be able to effectively criticize the press, because you’ll be required to pay to quote as few as five words from what they publish.
Welcome to a world in which you won’t own any of your technology or your music or your books, because ensuring that someone makes their profit margins will justify depriving you of the even the most basic, commonsensical rights in your personal, hand-level household goods.
PREVIOUSLY | June 16, 2008 There's a certain level of meta-citizen journalism irony involved in this post: I've highlighted an excerpt of an Associated Press wire story that was originally posted on Newsvine and concerns the AP's plan to meet with bloggers in order to establish guidelines for quoting AP stories online. Oh what a convoluted wwweb we weave. My head hurts.
Read more on the original AP vs. the Blogosphere controversy on NowPublic here and on Drudge Report here-- and TechCrunch's response here.
The Associated Press, following criticism from bloggers over an AP assertion of copyright, plans to meet this week with a bloggers' group to help form guidelines under which AP news stories could be quoted online.Jim Kennedy, the AP's director of strategic planning, said Monday that he planned to meet Thursday with Robert Cox, president of the Media Bloggers Association, as part of an effort to create standards for online use of AP stories by bloggers that would protect AP content without discouraging bloggers from legitimately quoting from it.
The meeting comes after AP sent a legal notice last week to Rogers Cadenhead, the author of a blog called the Drudge Retort, a news community site whose name is a parody of the prominent blog the Drudge Report.
The notice called for the blog to remove several postings that AP believed was an improper use of its stories. Other bloggers subsequently lambasted AP for going after a small blogger whom they thought appeared to be engaging in a legally permissible and widely practiced activity protected under "fair use" provisions of copyright law.
In response, the AP indicated it would seek to create guidelines, though even that idea triggered further protests. Michael Arrington wrote on his TechCrunch blog Monday that AP "doesn't get to make its own rules about how its content is used, if those rules are stricter than the law allows."
Wendy Seltzer, a legal scholar and a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, said it was encouraging that AP wanted to find an arrangement with bloggers to facilitate a mutually agreeable way for them to use AP content.
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June 17, 2008 at 06:42 am by Jarrett Martineau, 3137 views, 20 comments
Author
Crowd Power
politisite
Columbia, South Carolina, United States
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Comments (20)
at 16:10 on June 16th, 2008
Aside from government censorship, I don't think anything can stop the "blogosphere's" momentum. The AP should be aligning itself with bloggers, not alienating them.
at 16:25 on June 16th, 2008
at 17:26 on June 16th, 2008
Jarrett Martineau, I like this story. It's good stuff.
at 19:24 on June 16th, 2008
I think that AP is a little too stuffy. If someone were to copy a whole article then I would call that theft and AP has every right to move forward in removing the content from the perpetrator's site, but most people quote a small part of the article and link back to the original which is giving them full credit and driving traffic to the original article. That's what the web is all about. I guess AP still doesn't get it.
at 19:40 on June 16th, 2008
Ha - look an NP, the amount of 'theft' that goes on using the highlight tool!!
at 22:51 on June 16th, 2008
Ah Smells a News Rustlin a going on, git yer shooting iron matte, as we got a hangin to attind to.
at 19:31 on June 16th, 2008
Jarrett Martineau, I like this story. It's good stuff. AP should be working with bloggers. Even then, attempts at prohibition will be like the embargo against Cuba, ineffective.
at 22:49 on June 16th, 2008
Jarrett Martineau, I like this story. It's good stuff.
at 10:12 on June 17th, 2008
Jarrett Martineau, I like this story. It's good stuff.
I like this piece very much - thanks for posting it.
And here's where I'll probably earn the wrath of many fellow contributors, but I'm actually going to side with AP (and other wire services) in so far as I think original stuff, reporting what's going on and trying to write tight, pleasing-to-read, intelligible copy is far more rewarding (personally as a writer and a reader) than a simple "copy and paste" job.
As for direct quotes, well they can always be reported in indirect speech without plagiarising.
Bottom line though I guess is that AP does seem to have pretty heavy handed in its reaction.
at 10:20 on June 17th, 2008
Great points, I am fully in support of measures that encourage and promote original content creation, whether in written, photographic, or video form, however, I think the AP's approach is going to create many more problems than it will solve. And the blogosphere's backlash began even before today's developments. This is surely the beginning of a much bigger battle.
at 11:58 on June 17th, 2008
Jarrett Martineau, I like this story. It's good stuff.
at 12:06 on June 17th, 2008
Does that go both ways? Is AP still a partner with NP? Charge AP for five or more quoted words from NP and other bloggers? and don't forget to pass on a share.
at 12:10 on June 17th, 2008
Jarrett Martineau, I like this story. It's good stuff.
at 12:19 on June 17th, 2008
Five word combinations, even complete sentences, can be randomly generated given the fact that billions of words are printed each week on the Internet. Courteous bloggers give credit where credit is due.
The upside of course is that maybe people will start thinking for themselves instead of copying the work of others.
at 12:44 on June 17th, 2008
Just another attempt to throttle the internet and bloggers by 'big media'?
at 13:36 on June 17th, 2008
Jarrett Martineau, I like this story. It's good stuff.
at 13:56 on June 17th, 2008
Jarrett Martineau, I like this story. It's good stuff.
FIVE WORDS????
Although I concur that plagiarism is running rampant on the internet, still and all, FIVE WORDS as a charging level is not even close to reasonable.
Let's see: President George W. Bush today said....
OK, that's five words. Opens many standard news articles. So if AP says that to open an article, should we have to pay for the above five words?
Backlash. The pendulum swinging. One extreme to the other: "there's no such thing as intellectual property rights and copyright; oh heck, it's on the 'net let's just take it" to "12 words will cost ya." Extremes.
at 19:08 on June 17th, 2008
wow this story has been almost totally rewritten since my first comment - what's going on??
at 12:23 on June 18th, 2008
when will "old media" learn? idiots.
at 15:29 on June 19th, 2008
Jarrett Martineau, I like this story. It's good stuff. This reminds me of Sony keeping all the rights to the Betamax. Does anyone remember the better product the beta-max? No because The Makers of the VCR worked out agreements with everyone. Almost every house had a VCR. The AP might want to think about that. There is a lot of content out here.