AP Files 7 DMCA Takedowns Against Drudge Retort

mytrip points out a blog posting by Rogers Cadenhead, author of the Drudge Retort blog, who says: "I'm currently engaged in a legal disagreement with the Associated Press, which claims that Drudge Retort users linking to its stories are violating its copyright and committing 'hot news' misappropriation under New York state law." An AP attorney filed six Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown requests this week demanding the removal of blog entries and another for a user comment. The AP material they object to consists of snippets of from 33 to 79 words. Cadenhead claims his lawyer believes that all fall squarely within the province of fair use.

Comments

Washington Post bans the AP

[sp332]

The Washington Post is boycotting the AP over this. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/16/AR2008061600340.html

Re:The AP Has Retracted Its Complaint

[michaelmalak]

"Cutting and pasting a lot of content into a blog is not what we want to see," he said. "It is more consistent with the spirit of the Internet to link to content so people can read the whole thing in context."

That would be fine if controversial news didn't disappear off websites.

I had several such examples on my underreported.com blog where I had to take screenshots because I knew it would soon get "disappeared" (or I just happened to still have it open in one of the 20 browser windows I had open and when surfing to the news item again to ponder it, it was "hey, wait a minute.") I certainly wasn't the only one who had to do it.

Re:The AP Has Retracted Its Complaint

[Doc Ruby]

Yes, IFRAMEs don't serve to let the publisher of the external content control the integrity of what they're "pointing to".

If HTTP included content signing that could at least let the publisher of the link help readers clicking it to see that the target content has changed. Eventually there will probably be a "distributed archiving" system that points at URIs, "content names", rather than URLs, which point at "content location", regardless of whether the content changes.

In the meantime, "fair use" quoting isn't just fair. It's more fair than the content publishers who bait & switch when their original content brings blowback pressure they don't like. AP has to get with the 20th Century laws if it's going to survive in the 21st Century. That's why it's trying to change the laws in the 21st Century, so it can drag us back to 19th Century yellow journalism that pays, but doesn't inform.

Interesting quote from the AP

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the problems with the AP is that their whole business model isn't so different from providing an RSS feed these days. Fair use here may be an interesting case, because blogging might well cut down on their (obsolete) business model and because there's no limit to how little you can quote while being fair use. In fact, because this would seem to impact upon their business, the fair use case may be harder to make.

That said, they have an interesting way of justifying things. Pay attention to those last few lines:

Mr. Kennedy argued, however, that The Associated Press believes that in some cases, the essence of an article can be encapsulated in very few words.

"As content creators, we firmly believe that everything we create, from video footage all the way down to a structured headline, is creative content that has value," he said.

But he also said that the association hopes that it will not have to test this theory in court.

"We are not trying to sue bloggers," Mr. Kennedy said. "That would be the rough equivalent of suing grandma and the kids for stealing music. That is not what we are trying to do."

That's right. They're saying at least we're not as bad as the RIAA. Where's NYCL? :-)

It is not Fair Use:

[thtrgremlin]

TITLE 17 CHAPTER 1 Section 102 (b)
In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work. and...

International News Service v. Associated Press, 248 U.S. 215 (1918)
...
A news article in a newspaper may be copyrighted under the Act of March 4, 1909, but news, as such, is not copyrightable. P. 248 U. S. 234

As against the public, any special interest of the producer of uncopyrighted news matter is lost upon the first publication. Id. IANAL, but... isn't this, like, Journalism 101? It was their own damn case, AND THEY WON!!!

Re:Yellow is better

[michaelmalak]

Yellow journalism is a pejorative reference to journalism that features sex scandals, scandal-mongering, sensationalism, or other unethical or unprofessional practices by news media organizations or journalists. It has been loosely defined as "not quite libel".

If you think the blogging version of ^that^ has produced a more informed populace... Then you must be using a different definition.

No, that's pretty much it. The difference is the need to read blogs from opposite ends of the spectrum, rather than just trying to get all one's news from a single "newspaper of record" or one evening news show.

Example: Barack Obama is a muslim

As of this posting, about half on the front page say he is and half say he isn't

Good example. Because of blogs and chain e-mail, 1) the issue has been brought to the forefront, and 2) we can gather needed facts from those with an agenda to bring those facts to light (from each side) and then draw our own conclusions.

Re:The length of the quot e not important in absol

[shark72]

"as long as drudge is providing the info where they took the quote stuff from, i don't see how AP has a case in this. They provide a link to original story on AP its not stealing if you are giving the credit to the original writer in these cases."

There's a persistent meme on Slashdot that artists should be happy that their stuff is simply being shared and listened to. If they make even a peep about trying to make a living from their craft, they're branded as greedy businesspeople, not artists.

Looks like people are starting to think the same way about journalists, too. That's sad.

If the Drudge Retort fellow thinks that there's not much value to the AP articles which he excerpts, then great -- he can stop using them, and switch to a news service which is less profit-oriented and which allows free distribution of their content (provided he can find a suitable replacement). But if he thinks that using the AP source material is a benefit to his site and to its readers, he can license it, just like real news sites do.

He seems to be playing it down the middle -- the AP content is worth reproducing on his site, but not worth paying for.

Re:The AP Has Retracted Its Complaint

[Big Jojo]

And he said that he still believes that it is more appropriate for blogs to use short summaries of A.P. articles rather than direct quotations, even short ones.

That would screw up searches based on those direct quotations. Example: AP article says mouthpiece spouts propaganda, someone covers that as The latest example is this from AP: mouthpiece spouts propaganda Notice how this directly conflicts with fact, fact, fact, but also directly contradicts what mouthpiece said last week and would, if true, break not just another promise made to the voters but laws L1, L2, and L3.

In fact, maybe that's part of the goal here ... making it harder to find criticism associated with so-called news, and harder for third-party fact checkers (or spin detectors) to be effective.

Re:The AP Has Retracted Its Complaint

[jc42]

That nytimes article started with a comment that (if true) has interesting implications:

The Associated Press ... said that it will, for the first time, attempt to define clear standards as to how much of its articles and broadcasts bloggers and Web sites can excerpt without infringing on The A.P.'s copyright.

So the AP has decided that defining "fair use" and what is copyrightable isn't a question for Congress or the courts. The AP is going to decide for itself what can be copyrighted and what can't.

If this is true, I think I'll follow the same approach. I'm going to copyright the word "the", which I've used several times in this article. If I see an AP article using "the" without my permission, I'll send them a DMCA takedown notice. If they persist, I'll take them to court. Part of my evidence against them is their declaration that they have the right to decide the minimum that's copyrightable and they can enforce their definition. If they can decide that, then so can I.

Now I do realize that the nytimes could have misquoted them. Anyone know exactly what the AP actually said?

Of course, if you quote their exact statement here, they'll probably charge you with copyright violation. OTOH, if you merely provide a link to it, they'll change it after the fact, once they realize the import of what they said.