AP picks a fight with bloggers

The Associated Press is trying to back out of an Old Media-New Media fight that it didn’t quite mean to pick.

The 162-year-old news service will sit down with representatives of a bloggers group Thursday to devise guidelines allowing Internet commentators to use excerpts from AP stories and broadcasts.

The AP provoked outrage in the blogosphere last week when it issued a blunt legal demand that the Drudge Retort, a small online news and commentary site, remove seven posts containing snippets –- all less than 80 words long –- from AP stories. The website, named in satirical homage to the much-larger Drudge Report news site, promptly complied with the demand but started the furor by calling attention to the incident in an online posting.

The traditional news media have long complained about freeloading by Internet sites that republish their articles without permission or compensation, and the AP is under pressure from its owner-members — 1,500 U.S. daily newspapers — to step up the fight against copyright infringement. The issue has heated up recently as newspapers have slashed staff and shrunk the size of their papers amid a severe advertising downturn.

But bloggers regard the use of news excerpts to stimulate online discussion as a long-established and constitutionally protected practice known as fair use. They reacted to the AP’s demand as if it had taken a hammer to a daisy.

TechCrunch, the popular Silicon Valley website, announced it would boycott AP stories until the organization reversed its stand. Another blogger, Jeff Jarvis of BuzzMachine, called on his peers to reprint AP articles at length in a Web-wide show of defiance.

Even Jim Kennedy, AP vice president for strategic planning, acknowledged that the legal tactic was heavy handed.

Faced with the withering reaction from the blogosphere, Kennedy and other AP executives ...

... met on Friday and decided that “we were maybe pressing this too far,” he said. “Our gut feeling was that we needed to rethink it.”

He said it wasn’t the AP’s intention to squelch legitimate commentary.

The Drudge Retort, begun years ago as a liberal reaction to the conservative Drudge Report, has since morphed into a Web community with about 8,500 users who post comments in reaction to news events, according to owner Rogers Cadenhead.

He said he was “dumbfounded” to be threatened with a court battle over excerpts that he thought fell clearly within the parameters of fair use, an established legal principle allowing scholars, book reviewers and the like to quote from copyrighted material.

“If their concerns go all the way down to 35-word excepts, I don’t see how fair use is possible,” Cadenhead said of the AP.

Kennedy said the issue isn’t the length of the excerpts but the purpose for which they’re being used. He said he wanted to develop guidelines that would help distinguish between bloggers using news snippets as launch pads for discussion and “sites that systematically strip AP content and reuse it without permission,” sometimes selling advertising around it.

Kennedy has set a Thursday meting with Robert Cox, president of the Media Bloggers Assn., to try to develop what he called a set of “best practices” to accommodate commentators while protecting the AP’s intellectual property.

Cox, who said his organization has resolved previous disputes between bloggers and such news outlets as CNN and the New York Times, said he hopes the AP would “communicate in a less heavy-handed way what it is they’re upset about and what they’re willing to accept.”

-- Thomas S. Mulligan

Mulligan, a Times staff writer, covers media from New York

Screen shot courtesy of Drudge Retort

Comments

[Michael Snyder]

Leave it to a Lawyer to screw up a good thing. I constantly quote and list links to other news agencies to support my point of discussion within a thread. I'd think many of these sources actually gained readership as a result of this technique.

[Bob Meade]

AP deserve some credit for having a rethink. It's a tough issue - trading off exposure versus dollars versus potential monetization versus public relations.

[william p]

Wow...for what purpose they're being used...?? is that for real? If that is in fact what was said then it's an absolute indictment of where he "thinks" from....very Orwellian.... another in a long list of reasons for the none too soon demise of the current media, I mean , mouthpiece..

[cdupree]

Personally I'd love to see AP take bloggers to court for using 79-word excerpts with the wrong purpose. They'd be laughed out of court, as they know. The only reason they backed off is that they know their position is ridiculous. Fair use has nothing to do with intent, or advertising. AP is not losing money because Drudge Retort links to their articles, and they know it.

[Chad B]

You would have thought they would have learned from the articles they covered regarding RIAA that heavy handed, blanket lawsuits were a bad idea.

[Nedly Mandingo]

Bloggers, LOL.

When does fair use turn to stealing?

Copy & pasting nearly entire articles to comment on it like some old man yelling at the kids to get off his lawn.

[Bill Enator]

I don't think that the AP really cares about "Fair Use" unless it benefits them. The AP feels free to help themselves to content from blogs, websites and other news organizations under the fair use doctrine.. but don't dare try to use the same protections.

I've compared what AP’s recent legal behaviour is to a gang coercing and strong-arming innocent business owners to pay “protection money” to stay or do business on the gang’s turf. When in fact no such permission or license is required, lawful or needed.

The Associated Press is trying to accomplish through threat and weight of litigation what it isn't entitled to and can't accomplish through market forces and what it would never get awarded through the courts. Sorry but the AP, or any company for that matter doesn't get to decide what is fair use.

[Jimmy]

I used quotes on my English term paper. I got an "B-" and "B+" grade. I passed ENG 101 and 102.

I like to say for bloggers out there. You better get a good lawyer. -- Good Luck !!

[garden grow]

A real joke! But very important... I mean a 'news' story that has about all the life of a candy wrapper. It's not like these sites don't profit from being disseminated over the Web, they get a lot of clicks! And they are making money from Bloggers who use their stories! There just doesn't seem to be any data as yet. I mean there is bound to be a story that is read by someone three years down the road who uses the bloggers link to the AP story and Ap gets a sale from that persons interest from an original story that wouldn't be remembered by anyone if not for the blogger!

I guess AP thinks its writers are now artists! This isn't War And Peace being disseminated.

[johnQ public]

Does AP pay the public or even get their permittion for extracting stories and pictures on their lives or the news. I think not. They call it freedom of speach and don't pay anyone a dime as they make money off their lives.