AP Targets Blog Excerpts With DMCA Notices

Ian Lamont points us to The Industry Standard, which reports that the Associated Press has filed DMCA takedown notices against news site 'The Drudge Retort' for excerpting portions of AP news releases. The site's creator, Rogers Cadenhead, has posted his analysis of the letters sent to him by the AP. Employees of the AP have defended the notices in posts on various blogs, saying, "We get concerned when we feel the use is more reproduction than reference, or when others are encouraged to cut and paste. That's not good for original content creators; nor is it consistent with the link-based culture of the Internet that you and others have cultivated so well."

Comments

Just another attack on Fair Use

[SpaceLifeForm]

Unless you steal an entire article, but just excerpt reasonable snippets, you are exercising your 'Fair Use' right under copyright law.

Don't forget the attribution!

Re:Just another attack on Fair Use

[hardburn]

I largely agree, except that it isn't just blogs who are guilty of this regurgitation. All the regular newspapers repost the same AP wire story, too, cluttering up google search results just as much as blogs.

Why do wire services still exist? Are we still pretending we get our news from separate sources?

Separation of Copyright and Press...

[gnuASM]

...should become a central doctrine that every Constitution-loving individual should be touting to their representatives. When items of fact can be controlled through the premise of copyright protection, the *IAAs' will look like a child's prank compared to the censorship of thought and ideas that will arise by extending monopolies to cover facts.

Irregardless of ANY form of creativeness, press is a protection of the People that may neither be hindered nor prohibited by the State, and this includes Congress. Congress is granted the power to extend copyrights, or temporal monopolies on ideas and expression. Press, on the other hand, is a power of the People, which Congress has NO power to hinder.

Copyright in and of itself hinders the natural dissemination of an idea by restricting the distribution of that idea. Press was expressly included in the first Amendment as an exclusion to the powers of Congress in extending copyrights, that the dissemination of current and historic fact may not be controlled and censored.

If we continue to allow works of the Press to be treated as works protected under Copyright, than eventually we will no longer be allowed to claim the sky to be blue, for a fact to be true, or for 1+1 to equal 2, without infringing copyright and becoming enemies of the State.

Interesting Idea...

[maz2331]

Perhaps news reporting should be given a vastly shorter copyright term... say, 1 week as opposed to "forever" as is currently the practice.

Seriously, how much value does a week-old news article have nowadays?

Copyright is great for "expressive works". It's not really good when applied to "facts".

What really bugs me

[Maxo-Texas]

In the local city paper in texas, they have a 6", one column story about how someone in Kansas was killed. This person is not otherwise newsworthy.

1st... WHO CARES????
2nd... This creates the impression that the world is a lot more dangerous place than it really is.
3rd... again.. who cares? This isn't a famous person- they have no ties to texas... there is no reason for it to be reported anywhere in texas.

It's like talking about how wild monkeys are attacking a village in india last year.

I want my local paper to have local news. Heck, tell me about the flood control changes they plan ahead of time (instead of afterwards)- tell me about something happening in other texas cities.

The national stories should be in a national section and should be significant- not random.

Really bugs me.