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

Re:My first suggestion

[deft]

In other news, I'll go ahead and try to figure out of it's 6 or six.

And in other news....

[Cutie Pi]

SourceForge, Inc. files 32,819 DMCA notices against its daughter site, Slashdot.org, for blatantly reproducing its own stories, such as this one.

Re:I'll say it again.

[zblack_eagle]

Some of the DMCA takedowns are user comments on posts that quote other articles. I'm pretty sure that I'm not attempting journalism by posting this comment on slashdot

The AP Has Retracted Its Complaint

[Doc Ruby]

Under heavy criticism from people who actually know how the Internet works, the AP has retracted its DMCA complaints:

Last week, The A.P. took an unusually strict position against quotation of its work, sending a letter to the Drudge Retort asking it to remove seven items that contained quotations from A.P. articles ranging from 39 to 79 words.

On Saturday, The A.P. retreated. Jim Kennedy, vice president and strategy director of The A.P., said in an interview that the news organization had decided that its letter to the Drudge Retort was "heavy-handed" and that The A.P. was going to rethink its policies toward bloggers.

The quick about-face came, he said, because a number of well-known bloggers started criticizing its policy, claiming it would undercut the active discussion of the news that rages on sites, big and small, across the Internet [...]

But the AP still doesn't really get it (if it can get away with destroying it, where "it" is "fair use"):

Still, Mr. Kennedy said that the organization has not withdrawn its request that Drudge Retort remove the seven items. 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.

"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."

It really doesn't matter....

[zappepcs]

IMO, the fact that they could do so is evidence, and damn strong evidence that the system is broken. Not broken a little bit, but completely broken.

The story as it goes is stupid. It would not happen if the Drudge Report was a high school newspaper. This is simply an attempt to quash competition using the DMCA. A government tool provided for their friends to squash anyone that might dissent. Canadians? Listen up... this kind of thing is on it's way to you.

Yes, perhaps this is not about dissent, but the unintended consequences of the law are showing through, and it clearly shows that the law is not in the best interests of the public. It is a bad law. It is being used in this case to stop the freedom of thought and speech.

Seriously, I hope that this whole mess costs them millions in the end. It is not only despicable, it is against all that is good in humanity. Sure, that sounds like a rant, but WE have to start pushing back now, not later when there is no room to do so. Please everyone stop supporting the AP in any way shape or form. They need to just go the way of buggy whip makers.

No, this is not some plea to get you to support the latest l337 cause. This is a plea to get you to support your constitutional rights. Those of you reading this that are not Americans can also help. Make this company fail. The Brits know that what America does, Britain does at twice the speed and volume (more or less) so it is not an issue for a single country. We all need to speak out about what is wrong, always, as a single voice, whether it is Darfur, London, Washington, or Lisbon etc.

Please

Re:Washington Post bans the AP

[socsoc]

Although TechCrunch stories do appear on Washington Post, they are not the same and it's just content sharing. http://biz.yahoo.com/iw/080508/0395131.html

Yellow is better

[michaelmalak]

In case you haven't noticed, we're better informed now in the 21st century thanks to yellow blogs. It's the 20th century supposedly unbiased news sources that kept us dumbed down -- the populace places too much trust in the mass media and consequently the mass media has become a puppet of the power elite.

The so-called "neutral point of view" came out of the Progressive Era, and like so many things of that era sold as a way to help the little guy, ended up being an instrument of The Man. Give me bias -- explicitly stated bias -- any day. It's a lot easier to understand that way.

Re:I'll say it again.

[gnick]

...and a handful of good porn sites... [Citation needed]
Please?

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:Interesting quote from the AP

[Maxmin]

One of the problems with the AP is that their whole business model isn't so different from providing an RSS feed these days.

An RSS feed delivers summaries of news stories. To create those stories, somebody was paid to go out (outside - you know, leave the computer and keyboard behind?) and gather news and photos. That's qualitatively different than delivering an XML feed, wouldn't you say?

blogging might well cut down on their (obsolete) business model

The blogosphere is largely an echo chamber, with no voice (i.e. reportage) of its own. No voice, no echo, no blogosphere... get it? Original news reporting happens outside that sphere, then it gets repeated, via RSS feeds, copy-n-paste etc., within it.

Without actual news stories to quote and make fair-use copies from, bloggers would be left to writing about taking their dog to the vet, or how the baby barfed on grandma's shoes, or whatever.

I mean, look at /. - with no stories to link to, we'd all be talking about Linus's latest kernel module, now wouldn't we?