Here’s the latest on the Associated Press v. Bloggers smackdown you may have read about elsewhere. The AP has announced an “Excerpt for Web Use” policy that requires payment of fees based on the number of words used. For example, one would owe the AP $12.50 for excerpting as few as five words. Yes, m’loves, that’s 5, as in the number of fingers most people have on one hand. See this article in BetaNews for more details.
Cernig at Newshoggers reports that the AP used 154 words from the rightie blog
Kos says he’s going to excerpt wantonly from the Associated Press all he pleases, nyah nyah nyah.
Lots of blogs are calling for boycotts of AP content. Not me. I’m going to keep using it. I will copy and paste as many words as I feel necessary to make my points and that I feel are within bounds of copyright law (and remember, I’ve got a JD and specialized in media law, so I know the rules pretty well). And I will keep doing so if I get an AP takedown notice (which I will make a big public show of ignoring). And then, either the AP — an organization famous for taking its members work without credit — will either back down and shut the hell up, or we’ll have a judge resolve the easiest question of law in the history of copyright jurisprudence.
The AP doesn’t get to negotiate copyright law. But now, perhaps, they’ll threaten someone who can afford to fight back, instead of cowardly going after small bloggers.
Having worked in print media for years, I can tell you that “fair use” often is one big gray area. I have encountered publishers who wanted a permissions fee for use of one sentence from a magazine or newspaper article to be republished in print. But on the web, if the brief excerpt is fully attributed and linked back to the original article, this is both driving traffic directly to the original article and also making the article more visible to search engines, which is a benefit to the publisher if its ad revenues depend on traffic.
I sometimes find entire blog posts of mine pasted on other blogs, and this annoys the hell out of me even if it’s linked. If the entire article is there, why would anyone feel a need to click on the link back to me? But that’s not what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about brief excerpts. The AP is nuts.
Update: Scholars & Rogues is taking the side of the AP. I just left the following comment there:
Having worked in print media for years, I can tell you that “fair use†often is one big gray area. I have encountered publishers who wanted a permissions fee for use of one sentence from a magazine or newspaper article to be republished in print.
But on the web, if the brief excerpt is fully attributed and linked back to the original article, this is both driving traffic directly to the original article and also making the article more visible to search engines, which is a benefit to the publisher if its ad revenues depend on traffic.
I sometimes find entire blog posts of mine pasted on other blogs, and this annoys the hell out of me even if it’s linked. If the entire article is there, why would anyone feel a need to click on the link back to me? But that’s not what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about brief excerpts. Now the AP wants to charge bloggers for use of as few as five words. That’s insane.
I write for the New York Times Company’s About.com site, which is a big commercial site, and I can tell you we live and die by traffic. Search engine optimization and traffic driving is the be-all and end-all of that business. If someone excerpts some of my writing with a link, this drives traffic back to my work on About.com and also helps move my writing up to the top of google searches, driving more traffic. Ultimately this makes About.com more money and it makes me more money, which makes me happy.
The New York Times encourages us to sniff out people re-publishing entire articles, and the NYT lawyers will issue takedown orders if such an article is found. But excerpts with links? We like people to publish excerpts with links.
There is indeed a crisis in news reporting now, because newspapers are losing revenue and cutting back on reporters and news bureaus. News gathering costs money, and bloggers do make free use of the work done by news-gatherers.
However, the issue ultimately is one of business models. The old print media business models don’t apply to the Web. How will news gatherers and media make profits in the future? The way things are falling out now suggests traffic and SEO are huge assets that web sites must cultivate to survive.
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Well, this idiot 😉 thinks the AP is beyond nuts. This is going to affect mainstream news sources, who will be avoided quite a bit. bloggers and others will look for stories via Reuters, AFP, smaller news sites, etc. People will not link to stories by the AP, which are featured at sites such as the NY Times, Wash Post, CNN, etc, reducing their web traffic, meaning their ads will be worth less.
Hell, I make nothing of their content, but, if I can send any amount of traffic to a site that carries their content, wow, I have just added some $$$ content to them.
You’re right, a few paragraphs excerpted should be OK, will, most, if not all, of a story is muy bad.
Just a comment on the NY Times’ more enlightened policy: they even have a specific page to enable bloggers generate lasting links to NYT material. (http://nytimes.blogspace.com/genlink) Now that’s the way to go!
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Hey, that is pretty cool, didn’t know about that one.
You’re right, they are doing something smart. They realize that every link matters, and every link, even from little bloggers, has the potential to general revenue.
Frankly, I’ve been tending away from quoting AP in my blog posts for some time, just because I’ve found their articles less-well-written and often slanted, compared to other sources covering the same news. So to think they want me to pay for fair use of their substandard product makes me laugh.
In the old days, one had to read AP coverage because it was what your local paper used. On the web, it’s a matter of a few clicks to read McClatchy, Reuters, the BBC, or even the direct text of a politician’s statement. Silly, silly AP.
The MSM is making itself irrelevant mostly due to lack of professionalism. Why should I read incompentently written poorly researched reguritations of conventional unwisdoms? I don’t watch TV “news” either.
Maybe if the execs realized that news consumers are smart and well informed and started presenting news for the smart and well informed…
I don’t think this is going to be the drop-kick that Kos is expecting. I’m no lawyer, though I did study some business law under a professor that specialized in intellectual property law, so I got a good introduction to the topic. I always thought it was a very gray subject.
Look at the Fair Use article on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use). Someone lost a fair use lawsuit over the extraction of 400 words from Gerry Ford’s autobiography because the copied words represented “the heart of the book.” Seems to me that most bloggers worth reading tend to go to the heart of the issue, and the referenced article, and thus might be at risk under this definition.
A fair use article on the Copyright Office website summed it up nicely: “The distinction between “fair use†and infringement may be unclear and not easily defined. There is no specific number of words, lines, or notes that may safely be taken without permission. Acknowledging the source of the copyrighted material does not substitute for obtaining permission.” (http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html, quoted without permission, I might add. :o)
Might be best to avoid AP altogether. And if their traffic dries up and they wither away … well, it was their policy that did it.
Dave — in print, for many many years, the rule of thumb was that a trade/commercial book publisher could not quote more than 100 or so words from another trade/commercial book without permission. Scholarly/academic presses get more leeway, more like 400 words. For commercial magazines even a brief quote often requires permission.
So, if we were talking about print, the AP would be right about their prerogative in requiring permission and a fee even for brief quotes. However, the Web is different, for reasons I believe I explained in the Update.
The impression I got from Denny’s S&R post was that both the bloggers and the AP had staked out untenable and unreasonable positions. Isn’t this suggestion:
The AP ought to tell blogs that it welcomes minimal use of excerpts if accompanied by links to the AP or to the news organization buying the AP story. The AP should tell bloggers, and bloggers ought to understand, that except in fair-use cases of criticism, parody, and the like, the AP cannot allow blogs to use significant excerpts or entire stories for free that other news organizations have paid for…
almost exactly the policy of the NYT as you explain it? Sounds much the same to me.
Frankly, I think this is a case of reciprocating hissyfits feeding on one another. Eventually, the AP will adjust to the times – it will have to in order to survive. And bloggers will remember that protecting intellectual property benefits everyone who profits from creating original work, not just big mean news agencies.
Yup, the web is different. Essentially, the material is out there on many, many legit sites, ripe for the picking. Easy access. You can pull the same article from CNN, NY Times, Wash Post, Fox News, and so on, vs a book one would have to actually type it themselves.
If the AP had anyone with any brains working there, they would simply limit the # of paragraphs excerpted to say no more then 4, and that it just can’t be a cut and paste, but, at least offer some sort of reason for posting it. Some discourse.
Instead, most of us smaller fry will just ignore AP stories. I don’t use them that much to start with, tending to use other sources.
Euphrosyne — are you reading impaired? The AP wants to be paid for
The original takedown included circumstances in which the blogger used as few as 19 words and linked them back to the AP article. AP cried foul and threatened the blogger with a suit. The New York Times, on the other hand, is just fine with similar brief excerpts that link back to the original article, because it drives traffic to the original article.
I realize some people have a pathological need to find “balance” and decide “one side’s as bad as another” whether it really is or not, but try to control yourself. Denny’s suggestions about what the AP “ought to” do are reasonable, but that’s not what the AP is doing.
You see, son, nobody is arguing with that. I’m not, the blogger the AP threatened is not. However, the point that doesn’t seem to be sinking in to some peoples’ thick heads is that the way profits are made on the Web differ from how profits are made in print.
Most of the time, on the Web, it does not impair anyone’s intellectual property to provide a brief excerpt and link back to another article. If anything, such practices ENHANCE the value of the original intellectual property by driving up web traffic and making the original more visible to search engines. Print doesn’t work that way, but the Web does.
WE ALL AGREE that it’s a ripoff to use so much of someone else’s work that no one feels a need to click the link and read the original, but
Got that? Thanks.
In the software business there is a healthy sub-industry of ‘cross-licensing’, in which companies license stuff to each other so that they avoid messy patent suits over who actually controls what.
I’m willing to offer AP a license to freely copy various 5 word phrases that I’m claiming are mine, such as “President Bush said on Monday” and “Candidate Barack Obama said today” in exchange for being able to freely copy their content as I have in the past.
Yes, Barbara, I understand that’s not what the AP is doing. I understand it from reading news stories and blogs like yours. Even if I hadn’t read the news stories, I would understand it from reading Denny’s post, because he mentioned the AP’s excessive and ridiculous tactics as well.
And yes, Barbara, I understand from publishing my own work and from reading your original response that the way profits are made online is very different from print, and that therefore standards of fair use should be different as well. Even if I hadn’t read your original response, I would understand this from reading Denny’s original post, because he mentioned that the best way for AP to cope with changing times is to recognize the real source of online revenue and ask for links and trackbacks rather than dollars per word.
And Barbara, what I also understand (or rather have just had reinforced) from reading this last effort of yours is that when people are in the midst of a hissyfit they not only lose their ability to read closely and think critically, they very often overgeneralize, miss the obvious, hear only what they want to hear, and quite often make asses of themselves.
Bloggers create original content, more often than not. So do artists. So do musicians. So does the AP. My point with the “blogger” comment, which perhaps I should have made in words of one syllable, was that we as bloggers should be very careful not to toss away the protections the AP is attempting to abuse as we fight to end that abuse, since those rights (nebulous though they may be) can and should protect all of us. My larger point was that Denny’s post not only touched on all of the issues you mentioned in your response, it essentially reinforced them.
But then again, when I read something, I read all of it and try to think before I respond. It’s a lifelong impairment. Along with courtesy.
The rule of thumb I’ve always heard is that when someone has to resort to using a large font, or all caps, it usually reveals a lack of wit. It certainly reveals a lack of breeding.
The AP is clearly being stupid about this. No question. That they forced the issue with a small blog that used so little of a quotation is also stupid. On the larger issue, however, they are on solid legal and ethical ground.
Taking and using something you didn’t make, without paying for it, and without adhering closely to the guidelines on when it’s appropriate to do so, is stealing. The AP does not have the right to define copyright infringement, but it does have the right to insist that copyright law be obeyed. To the degree it’s doing that, the AP is in the right. To the degree it’s requiring payment for words, regardless of the context of use, it’s clearly in the wrong.
But let’s be sure to distinguish between the two, as Denny on S&R did.
But then again, when I read something, I read all of it and try to think before I respond.
Apparently not well, however, because you seem to have read something in my post that I didn’t write, and that really pushes my buttons.
we as bloggers should be very careful not to toss away the protections the AP is attempting to abuse as we fight to end that abuse, since those rights (nebulous though they may be) can and should protect all of us.
And nobody is saying otherwise, which is why I find it incredibly tedious of you that you would bother to lecture me about it. Are you in the habit of wandering about lecturing everyone about things they already know? If so, let me advise you that it’s obnoxious.
I am a freelance writer and also was in the book and magazine publishing industry for 30 years. No one appreciates protecting the value of intellectual property more than I do. But we are talking about specific practices of AP that are unwarranted and stupid, not the entire field of copyright protection.
The rule of thumb I’ve always heard is that when someone has to resort to using a large font, or all caps, it usually reveals a lack of wit. It certainly reveals a lack of breeding.
The rule of thumb I’ve always followed is that if someone has the lack of wit and/or breeding to begin a comment by insulting me, I delete the comment (see comment policy). I will humor you this one time, however.
The AP is clearly being stupid about this. No question. That they forced the issue with a small blog that used so little of a quotation is also stupid. On the larger issue, however, they are on solid legal and ethical ground.
I disagree they are on solid legal and ethical ground. Although I am no lawyer, I spent 30 years in the book and magazine publishing industry and wrestled with copyright infringement problems all along the way. So I know how copyright laws are observed in the real world, which may or may not match the way they are written, but so be it.
As I wrote in comment #9 above, if we were talking about excerpts in a commercial print publication, the AP would have the law on its side. However, one aspect of copyright law that makes it fun is that “fair use” is determined in part by the nature of the publications involved, both the excerpt-er and the excerpt-ee. For example, as I also wrote in comment #9, academic publishing gets to follow different rules from commercial publishing. I worked for both kinds of publishers over the years, btw.
So, how do we apply this to the Web? My understanding is that there are huge gaps in both statutory and case law about how copyright applies to the Web, which leads me to think that anyone who’s not a copyright lawyer and who says with great confidence that the law is on ANYONE’S side is an ass.
However, in publishing, the bottom line on fair use often boiled down to whether the excerpt was so extensive that it diluted the value of the original work. In other words, did the offending publication reproduce so much of the “meat” of the original that fewer people would want to purchase the original? That wasn’t the only criterion, but it was a major criterion, particularly in borderline cases.
Part of my argument is that, since brief excerpts with links usually enhance the value of the original work rather than detract from it, then exactly how is the original publisher harmed, and why would he need a remedy? This is not an irrelevant point, as you seem to think.
Second, since “fair use” is determined in part on the type of publications involved — commercial, trade, academic, educational, etc. — exactly where do bloggers fit on that scale? I don’t think anyone’s figured that out.
Until someone does, kindly haul your pompous ass out of my blog. Thanks much.
I don’t think AP really cares.. It looks to me like they signed on to icopyright.com as a hired gun, and now they have a money producing watchdog who can intimidate anybody by a claim of copyright infringement. What blogger in their right mind is going to do a legal battle with an entity whose financial strength and legal resources are unknown. It’s like an collection agency where whatever money they can squeeze out of the system is their gravey. ibloodsuckers.com ?
I’m sure small potato bloggers need not fear because money is the trigger.