AP Will Sell You a "License" To Words It Doesn't Own

James Grimmelmann performed an experiment using the AP's form to request a license to use more than four consecutive words from one of their articles. Except that he didn't paste in words from the (randomly chosen) article, but instead used 26 words written by Thomas Jefferson 196 years ago: If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea. The AP cheerfully charged him $12 to use Jefferson's 26 words. Both Boing Boing and TechDirt have picked up the story so far. Grimmelmann adds an update to his blog: the AP has rescinded his license to Jefferson's words and issued a refund for his $12. They did not exhibit the grace to admit that their software is brain-dead.

Comments

Goodnight, Sweet AP.

[CuteSteveJobs]

And so we see yet another terminally-ill industry smothering itself with a pillow.

Re:Goodnight, Sweet AP.

[timeOday]

I see nothing wrong with what AP did here. This is like complaining that Comcast will let you pay your cable bill even if you don't watch any TV. Yeah, they will. So?

Re:Goodnight, Sweet AP.

[Anonymous Coward]

Which, given similar assertions made about countless other industries and companies, means they've got... oh... another thirty to forty years before anything bad happens to them, and we might be dead then, so we won't care?

Re:Goodnight, Sweet AP.

[sortius_nod]

No, it's not.

It's like Comcast charging you for another provider's cable.

If you don't own something you can't license it out, pretty simple. AP's clusterfuck of a piece of software they're using to determine what's theirs and what's not is the issue here. Relying purely on software without decent beta testing (which seems to happen more often than not) is one of the most retarded things you can do as a business.

Re:Goodnight, Sweet AP.

[sbeckstead]

I see an idiot not following directions and getting what he deserved. I would have kept his money.

Re:Goodnight, Sweet AP.

[Jurily]

If you don't own something you can't license it out, pretty simple.

You can, however, relicense something that's in the public domain. You're not even obliged to tell them it's public domain.

Re:Goodnight, Sweet AP.

[2short]

"AP's clusterfuck of a piece of software they're using to determine what's theirs and what's not is the issue here. "

There is no such piece of software. AP makes no claim that their software does that, nor anything like it. Their software counts the number of words in a passage you provide. That's all. I appears to achieve this simple task perfectly. Whether this is due to good beta testing, we can only speculate.

Re:Goodnight, Sweet AP.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Relicense" implies you had a license to it in the first place, which by definition you DON'T if it is in the public domain.

How is this even a debate?

Re:Goodnight, Sweet AP.

[mldi]

If you don't own something you can't license it out, pretty simple.

You can, however, relicense something that's in the public domain. You're not even obliged to tell them it's public domain.

At which point someone should turn your skull into a fucking canoe with a .50 cal rifle.

Following your logic, I am going to start billing people for fire, the wheel, and cutting blades.

Like bottled water?

Re:Goodnight, Sweet AP.

[fortapocalypse]

The issue is that AP sold him old words. Old words make you sick. They should sell new words like vreepfh or plucktilsh,

Re:Goodnight, Sweet AP.

[falconwolf]

I see an idiot not following directions and getting what he deserved.

I see an idiot who doesn't understand the broader implications. There is such as thing as fair use. AP however wants to deny fair use.

Falcon

Re:Goodnight, Sweet AP.

[Anonymous Coward]

And if you do that, some self-righteous blagger will pay it and make a big stink about it. I say go for it, I have mod points pretty much all the time and love cutting heads in stupid threads like this.

Re:Goodnight, Sweet AP.

[roseblood]

Speaking of old words, the AP is also selling a license to quote public domain material.

You can see the related story at: http://slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&id=5425113

Re:Goodnight, Sweet AP.

[Sparr0]

The public domain can be legally redefined, and has been in the past, retroactively in some cases. It is possible (but implausible in most cases) that I could, at a point in the future, become the copyright holder for the work in question. Then the license that I issue you today would become worthwhile.

Re:Goodnight, Sweet AP.

[mikiN]

Shout-out to all Slashdot physicists! Anonymous Cowards have mod points!

Now we know where all those mod points have gone. The discovery of the century: Dark Modpoints Finally Explained!

Re:Goodnight, Sweet AP.

[justin12345]

Indeed. Using Jefferson's words is not an effective demonstration of why their system is flawed. A better way of doing it would be to enter text which is you yourself have copyrighted. Acquire a license from AP for the text they do not own (because you do), publish it under their license, then sue AP for copyright infringement.

Re:Goodnight, Sweet AP.

[shutdown -p now]

You can, however, relicense something that's in the public domain. You're not even obliged to tell them it's public domain.

However, you cannot claim that the recipient of such license is not legally allowed to do certain things, when it is clearly false (because of the public domain nature of the source). In this case, upon handing out the "license", AP claimed:

The entire excerpt must be used exactly as written and the copyright attribution footer and link below must be included within the document in which the excerpt is published.

And the footer is:

(c) 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but even if the work is in public domain, you cannot claim copyright to it (you could claim copyright to a derived work, but not the original work verbatim). If so, what AP has done may well be illegal.

Re:Goodnight, Sweet AP.

[Anonymous Coward]

Since this is an analogy thread:

The incident in question is akin to bringing outside produce to a grocery store, weighing it at a self-service checkout, paying for it, and then trying to make a huge deal by claiming that the software is broken. It's a non-story.

Re:Goodnight, Sweet AP.

[Rakshasa Taisab]

Heh, reading the comments to this story and my conclusion is you guys are a bunch of fucking idiots. Anyone with any common sense, including a judge, would immediately note that you're supposed to use text from the article you're claiming to be taking excerpts from. And anything else is the user being an idiot trying to game the system. Common Sense, do you have it?

Re:Goodnight, Sweet AP.

[shutdown -p now]

Common Sense, do you have it?

My common sense tells me that it is generally not a good idea to have a fully automated, non-human-verified system that issues legal documents, claims, and threats in the name of the owner.

Re:Goodnight, Sweet AP.

[Will.Woodhull]

I like parent post's concept, but suggest that slashdotters with a little extra pocket change license some RIAA protected lyrics from AP. Then public inform the RIAA and see if we can incite a game of "Let's You And Him Fight".

Could be amusing...

Re:Goodnight, Sweet AP.

[SCPRedMage]

You're absolutely right. They should validate the submitted text against every single AP article ever copyrighted.

I mean, there's only, what, twelve of them, right? That database shouldn't take long to search through every single time someone clicks "submit"...

Seriously, people. AP hasn't tried to claim copyright over the submitted Jefferson quote. They just didn't make sure that they owned the rights before selling a license to someone who came to them to SPECIFICALLY buy a license from someone he damn well KNEW didn't own it. AP has done nothing wrong here.

Re:Goodnight, Sweet AP.

[BigSlowTarget]

They just might be stupid enough to actually go for this one. Of course with the way things seem to work in the world one would eventually win and entirely consume the other. The RIAAAP would then probably sue everyone for copyrights on letters, numbers and bits.

Re:Goodnight, Sweet AP.

[Anonymous Coward]

I like this idea.

Re:Goodnight, Sweet AP.

[Anonymous Coward]

AP has done nothing wrong here.

Nonsense. If AP doesn't know whether they own their own content then who does? AP is just trying it on. Dishonestly.

Re:Goodnight, Sweet AP.

[SCPRedMage]

The automated form for people to license quotes from AP articles doesn't validate that the input is actually from an AP article, and considering the sheer volume of data to verify against, doing so would probably be far to computationally expense to attempt.

You're not supposed to put anything other than a quote from an AP article in that form, so it was designed on the assumption that they DO own the copyright on whatever the user is requesting a license for. The only reason to put anything else in is for a stupid stunt to get some hits for your crappy blog.

Re:Goodnight, Sweet AP.

[jimicus]

My common sense tells me that it is generally not a good idea to have a fully automated, non-human-verified system that issues legal documents, claims, and threats in the name of the owner.

There's got to be a joke about lawyers not being human in there somewhere.

Re:Goodnight, Sweet AP.

[bakes]

The 'sheer volume' of data becomes significantly smaller if you ask the submitter to enter the date that the article appeared.

Re:Goodnight, Sweet AP.

[calmofthestorm]

Or sqlite: http://www.hwaci.com/cgi-bin/license-step1

Re:Goodnight, Sweet AP.

[Anonymous Coward]

OMFG that idea is win +5!

Re:Goodnight, Sweet AP.

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean, there's only, what, twelve of them, right? That database shouldn't take long to search through every single time someone clicks "submit"...

I realize you're trying to be sarcastic, but-- yes, it SHOULDN'T take long. Just like it doesn't take long for, say, Google to search billions of web pages anytime someone clicks on "Search".

Of course, there is a remote chance that you're right and that it would indeed take too long. But in that case, I'm sorry, that'd be AP's problem; they'd have to come up with another system, one that actually works. Charging for things they don't own just because they can't tell whether they own them is never acceptable.

Put another way: imagine you go to a clothes store, and there's an automated cash register that scans the items you're carrying when you leave and charges you accordingly. Now imagine that the system doesn't know what the store is actually selling and what it isn't, so EVERYTHING you're wearing gets charged to your card. And imagine when you call the store out on it, they argue that they can't possibly know what their inventory contains, so they consider it fair to charge you for every piece of clothing, no matter whether it's theirs or not.

I think most sane people would argue that a) this is not OK and b) that the burden is on the store to find a different, better solution here.

Re:Goodnight, Sweet AP.

[Anonymous Coward]

And if anyone else does it, they find themselves in a court room with people telling them ignorance of the law is no excuse. Companies have gotten sued for software the failed to properly validate what, by law, in terms of copyright. If AP is going to set up a system like this, it needs to be competent and work. Does AP go to a blogger who may have referenced a little too much of their work and say "You know what, maybe he didn't know, we'll let him off, don't do it again you crazy kid you!". No! They will drag that blogger through court, bankrupt them and generally make sure he will never be able to purchase anything bigger than a pack of cigarettes for the rest of his life. So really don't give me that "Corporations will be corporations!" bullshit.

Re:Goodnight, Sweet AP.

[fgouget]

Hi,

Want to spend a night in the presidential suite in the White House? Just send me the low sum of $100 for a one night reservation and enjoy your stay.

P.S.: Yeah, I guess it's not really my place to make this kind of offer but, by your reasoning, if you do send me the $100 dollars it's because you're too stupid, not because I'm a crook. So I might as well try!

Re:Goodnight, Sweet AP.

[DocWat232]

Step on some toes of some retired folks and we could have the RIAAAPAARP!

Re:Goodnight, Sweet AP.

[fgouget]

Or even better; what about a Windows Vista license for $10?

After all, still by your reasoning, it's not because I don't own the copyright to Vista that selling licenses for it would be illegal or wrong in any way. Right?

Re:Goodnight, Sweet AP.

[mcgrew]

Why isn't some hotshot Attorney general filing suit for fraud, which this obviously is? Seems like an open and shut case to me. Is there a lawyer in the house that can answer this?

Re:Goodnight, Sweet AP.

[Anonymous Coward]

I see what you tried to do there. But you got the author wrong... it was Thomas Paine, not Jefferson. Even if it wasn't intended.

Re:Goodnight, Sweet AP.

[neoform]

But bottled water has MINERALS.. and my body needs minerals and shit, right? Therefore, bottled water is better for me than regular water. Yes, people actually believe this.

Re:Goodnight, Sweet AP.

[MrNiceguy_KS]

Eventually we'd end up with IP Voltron

Re:Goodnight, Sweet AP.

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with common sense is that it's not so common.

Re:Goodnight, Sweet AP.

[MikeBabcock]

And a simple grep against their document archive would still be smart.

Re:Goodnight, Sweet AP.

[sbeckstead]

You obviously don't know what fair use is. The broader implications are that if you only put text into the form that they own you only pay for what they own. This isn't a fair use issue it's a "I didn't follow the instructions and their dumb software charged me anyway" issue.

Re:Goodnight, Sweet AP.

[sabt-pestnu]

> The only reason to put anything else in is for a stupid stunt to get some hits for your crappy blog. ...or to test the system.

In this case, the system failed.

Had you read TFA, you would have noted that an article WAS specified. See This link, for instance. It is not unreasonable for a request to use a snippet of an article to search THAT ARTICLE to see if the content is present.

> You're not supposed to ...
When you are talking about a machine, device, automated process or etc, "supposed to" is singularly inappropriate. It is what CAN be done with it that has any significance at all. If "supposed to" had any power, liability lawsuits would be very much limited.

Re:Goodnight, Sweet AP.

[2short]

Right. A "simple grep" against the archive of all AP documents. I'm not sure why you think such a single archive exists, why you think grep would be suitable way to search it.

In any case, why would that be smart? How much money is it 'smart' for a businesses to spend on efforts whose only purpose is to make sure people don't find ways to trick the business into accepting money for no reason?

Re:Goodnight, Sweet AP.

[Chosen Reject]

the sheer volume of data to verify against...would probably be far to computationally expense to attempt

You're telling me that any search engine/database can search for "Text with quotes around it" and find the phrase exactly from any place on the internet, but the AP can't search their comparatively small database for the same? What kind of crappy database is that? If it can do that then the human component becomes trivial. If the phrase appears in a small number of articles, then it's trivial for a human to go through those articles and determine if the searched-for phrase is actually owned by the AP. If it appears in a large number of articles, then it's a good bet that the phrase is too generic to copyright. If even one of those articles is older than copyright (the AP started in 1846) allows, then they can't claim copyright. I'm not much of a SQL guy but even I could write a really simple query to do that.

You're not supposed to put anything other than a quote from an AP article in that form

What if what you want to quote is from an article they published, but it turns out that it was really a quote from someone else? How about this one: "This is going to be a close call." That's what a judge said during a brief hearing. If I entered that text, they would license it to me, even though the quote would be part of the court's records and thus not copyrightable. So they DO NOT own the copyright on whatever the user might enter, even if they do enter something from one of their articles.

If you read the article linked above, and understand what the AP is trying to do here, you will find that I violated their Terms of Use because I quoted more than 4 words and didn't pay them the license fee. I'm not referring to the quote I gave. Instead, I used the phrase "said during a brief hearing." What they are trying to do is stupid.

Re:Goodnight, Sweet AP.

[Mozk]

As in, "I thought that's what lawyers were."?

Re:Goodnight, Sweet AP.

[falconwolf]

A straw man.

Falcon

Re:Goodnight, Sweet AP.

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet $20 on the RIAA.

Re:Goodnight, Sweet AP.

[GargamelSpaceman]

I don't see why the AP shouldn't be able to CLAIM that someone can't do X with a work ( even if it's in the public domain ). I can claim to be a Voodoo Shaman and to have put a hex on you that will cause you to die of Creeping Nematodes. It's a free country. I can claim anything I want. I can claim I am an intergalactic space bunny with a glowing fuzzy penis if I want to.

Re:Goodnight, Sweet AP.

[shutdown -p now]

I don't see why the AP shouldn't be able to CLAIM that someone can't do X with a work ( even if it's in the public domain ). I can claim to be a Voodoo Shaman and to have put a hex on you that will cause you to die of Creeping Nematodes. It's a free country. I can claim anything I want. I can claim I am an intergalactic space bunny with a glowing fuzzy penis if I want to.

There is a big difference between free speech and fraud, free country or no.

Re:Goodnight, Sweet AP.

[sbeckstead]

Yeah kind of.

Re:Goodnight, Sweet AP.

[GargamelSpaceman]

Maybe there shouldn't be. If people had to be on the lookout for fraud, then a reputation would be worth something, and maybe less fraudsters would be successful.

Free press

[Mendoksou]

Should be changed to "$.46-a-word" press.

Re:Free press

[stinerman]

If the going rate is $.46 per word, I'm in the wrong line.

Re:Free press

[MightyYar]

This whole mess could be fixed by simply... [please deposit 25 cents]

Copy and paste the article text you want to use.

[seanadams.com]

I'm afraid Mr. Grimmelman has a severe English comprehension deficiency. The instructions are a single sentence, clear as day. It says paste the article text you want to use. Not " paste whatever you like, and if our javascript form counts the words for you then consider it assertion of copyright by us.".

brain-dead?

[commodoresloat]

I don't think so; the software did exactly what it was supposed to do. What is brain-dead here is the AP thinking that this sort of thing is a good idea in the first place. I can understand them wanting to charge for the use of entire articles in commercial databases or such, but I can't imagine a situation in which you would want to use "more than four consecutive words" (but less than entire articles) for anything that wouldn't be covered by fair use anyway.

Re:brain-dead?

[yincrash]

The moral of the story is don't let content owners tell you what is acceptable fair use, because OF COURSE they will always err on it being not fair use. I think that for anyone who legitimately wants to follow the law and legitimately use a large portion of text, having a tool like this is pretty great. It's better than the alternatives of having to hassle with trying to find someone w/in the AP that can license to you or just illegally copying the text outright.


but again, if you know you are w/in fair use, then use it, or ask an expert, don't ask the content owner.

Re:brain-dead?

[SETIGuy]

I can understand them wanting to charge for the use of entire articles in commercial databases or such, but I can't imagine a situation in which you would want to use "more than four consecutive words" (but less than entire articles) for anything that wouldn't be covered by fair use anyway.

It's worse than that. It's dangerous for anyone ever to use this tool. By using this tool and paying AP for a license to use N words, you might be acknowledging that you believe that any bit of text N words or greater is not covered by fair use. It's better to get wrongly sued for a fair use than to give up fair use entirely.

Re:brain-dead?

[commodoresloat]

By using this tool and paying AP for a license to use N words...

Wait a minute ... AP is now claiming copyright to the N-word?

And so it begins...

[i_ate_god]

APAFIA

There's a market for meaningless licenses.

[Frater 219]

I've known folks whose workplaces used to pay Sun a license fee for Perl ... the same Perl you could download for free (as in beer); and yes, the same Perl that is one of the usual examples of successful free (as in speech) software.

No, they didn't get tech support. They didn't get to file bugs against Perl that would be resolved by a Sun engineer. They didn't even get a custom build of Perl optimized for their Sun hardware. They didn't even get a CD. What they got was an invoice ... precisely what their company's IT procurement process required.

It's idiotic, but there is in fact a market for nothing: if you are correctly positioned as a trusted supplier, there are cases when you can get paid for delivering no product at all, but merely for carrying out the ritual of delivering a product, with all the paperwork thereunto appertaining.

Re:There's a market for meaningless licenses.

[BabyDuckHat]

I'm going to start a business selling licenses to things that I don't own. It will be a covenant from me that if I do ever become the owner of said property, I won't sue you for not paying me. It's important to be BabyDuckHat compliant.

Re:There's a market for meaningless licenses.

[bitt3n]

if you are correctly positioned as a trusted supplier, there are cases when you can get paid for delivering no product at all, but merely for carrying out the ritual of delivering a product, with all the paperwork thereunto appertaining.

there's no need to bring religion into this

Re:There's a market for meaningless licenses.

[Anonymous Coward]

"paperwork thereunto appertaining"

That's now the new name of my acid rock band.

Thanks!

Re:There's a market for meaningless licenses.

[Facegarden]

I've known folks whose workplaces used to pay Sun a license fee for Perl ... the same Perl you could download for free (as in beer); and yes, the same Perl that is one of the usual examples of successful free (as in speech) software.

No, they didn't get tech support. They didn't get to file bugs against Perl that would be resolved by a Sun engineer. They didn't even get a custom build of Perl optimized for their Sun hardware. They didn't even get a CD. What they got was an invoice ... precisely what their company's IT procurement process required...

Yeah, I noticed SQLite allows for the option of purchasing a license, even though it is public domain, for that exact reason - when someone who doesn't get it above you makes you buy a license. Then they charge $1000. Heh.

Which makes me wonder... if it is in the public domain, couldn't anyone sell a license for it? And if that's the case, couldn't *I* sell a license for it, for cheaper? I could sell SQLite licenses for a mere $500!

Anyone know about that?
-Taylor

Re:There's a market for meaningless licenses.

[rattaroaz]

I'm going to start a business selling licenses to things that I don't own. It will be a covenant from me that if I do ever become the owner of said property, I won't sue you for not paying me. It's important to be BabyDuckHat compliant.

Sorry. I already own a patent for that. Pay up, buddy. Brought to you by Rattaroaz compliance authorities.

Re:There's a market for meaningless licenses.

[maharb]

You can definitely sell a download or something for $500, what you say in your "license" may change if you can sell that. But in general the answer to your question is yes, you can sell it for $500. Finding a buy is step 1.

Re:There's a market for meaningless licenses.

[fermion]

Capitalism is based on the idea of value added. Libertarian and republican politics is based on the idea that government interference has a net benefit in limited cases. It is up to the consumer to make sure that the value added is worth the costs charged. For instance, a bottle of tap water is sold for a dollar. A throwaway guitar with a picture of Hannah Montana on it is sold for $50. A nylon bag with a prada label is a thousand. Is it up to government to restrict these values?

No, the issue is not that these things are sold. The issue is there are dumb asses out there who will borrow, cheat, and steal to own these things. There is nothing wrong with the things, only that we create a system in which people will ruin their lives to acquire the things.

So if Sun sells a license to perl, maybe it does provide added value. If the AP is going to sell a license, it may not make sense for quotes, but it may make sense for other things. People pay huge amounts of money for a Christian Bilble when a free version has the same words. This is just good sales.

Re:There's a market for meaningless licenses.

[Desler]

Yes, you can sell public domain works. No one can stop you since no one holds a copyright to it.

Re:There's a market for meaningless licenses.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm starting a company in Europe and applying for financing from the Government. If I'd buy 'free stuff' from a 'friendly business' I could get it covered, but I can't pay wages for a person my company to do it with the financing. The situation is absurd, and it forces you to outsource everything in the first phases in order to get funding.

I'm sure a friendly organization would be more than happy to receive free money for an agreement to provide something for me off the books.

I'm practically forced to INVENT expenses in order to get financing for the stuff I actually need to do due to these stupid rules. I'm sure there's something alike involved here. (We _must_ spend 75% of our expenses to research and out of house expertise eventhough we've got all those aspects covered -- we just need to be able to pay people to work with the product for a while before we can release it. It's absurd that the resourcing covers outsiders' wages but not OURS.)

Sheesh, I could rant about this for ages and ages. Even more coherently than now. And with a real idea instead of random rambling.

Re:There's a market for meaningless licenses.

[Facegarden]

Yes, you can sell public domain works. No one can stop you since no one holds a copyright to it.

Hah, nice. That would be a hilarious business.
-Taylor

Re:There's a market for meaningless licenses.

[adolf]

My sarcasm detector is broken today, so I can't tell if your comment is serious or if it just made a big whooshing noise over my head.

But there's a lot of companies which (well, used to, mostly) make a living selling public domain software. The back pages of any computer rag in the 80s or early 90s were full of them.

Re:There's a market for meaningless licenses.

[Anonymous Coward]

>> I've known folks whose workplaces used to pay Sun a license fee for Perl

> there's no need to bring religion into this

Won't someone please think of the Python developers?

Re:There's a market for meaningless licenses.

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

I'm going to start a business selling licenses to things that I don't own. It will be a covenant from me that if I do ever become the owner of said property, I won't sue you for not paying me. It's important to be BabyDuckHat compliant.

Well, it works for red hat, et al...

Re:There's a market for meaningless licenses.

[Facegarden]

My sarcasm detector is broken today, so I can't tell if your comment is serious or if it just made a big whooshing noise over my head.

But there's a lot of companies which (well, used to, mostly) make a living selling public domain software. The back pages of any computer rag in the 80s or early 90s were full of them.

Hmm, yeah, not Sarcasm. In the '80s I was no more than 6 years old, so I didn't realize people did that, but it makes sense for times before the internet. It would no longer make much sense to do it however, as anything like that could be found on the internet, so it would amuse me if people did it today.
-Taylor

Re:There's a market for meaningless licenses.

[shadowofwind]

if you are correctly positioned as a trusted supplier, there are cases when you can get paid for delivering no product at all, but merely for carrying out the ritual of delivering a product, with all the paperwork thereunto appertaining.

there's no need to bring religion into this

Religion? He was talking about SBIR defense research.

Re:There's a market for meaningless licenses.

[SydShamino]

Do you think PHB will sign a purchase req for $500 to Taylor Facegarden, when they could instead sign one for $1000 to Sun Microsystems, Inc.?

Re:There's a market for meaningless licenses.

[shermozle]

You don't get it. No, you charge $5,000 because nobody in their right mind would buy the cheap and nasty version. Oh no, your version is CERTIFIED. (includes certificate on fancy paper)

Re:There's a market for meaningless licenses.

[Barny]

In these cases your not so much selling the information/code, your selling your time and distribution costs. (not refering to TFA but to this thread)

Where I work (computer sales/repair shop) we frequently get requests for latest hardware drivers, unix distros, etc, and we charge $5AU for that, merely to cover the cost of the disk and our time to burn it, and make sure that the customer knows thats what the money is for.

Re:There's a market for meaningless licenses.

[AnyoneEB]

The SQLite paid options include some extra features and support ("expedited bug fixes and fast, authoritative answers to common SQLite programming questions"). They do give you something for your money.

Re:There's a market for meaningless licenses.

[shutdown -p now]

It is indeed nothing new. In Russia, legal authorities often go around to check businesses for unlicensed software (yes, I mean real cops, not some local BSA). Now those guys are usually very clueless, so what they look for is usually Windows and Office licenses and holographic stickers. This poses some problem for businesses that use Linux and/or OpenOffice, as you can have a hard time convincing a cop that, no, this isn't Windows, and, yes, this is free software, really, we mean it, no license required. The general presumption is often that if PC can be turned on and boots into any kind of GUI, then it must be Windows.

Now this is obviously bullshit, and one can fight it in courts... but you really don't want to sue the police in courts in Russia; even if you win, it is going to take a long time - and in the meantime they'll confiscate all your PCs with "unlicensed software", and maybe all the rest too, claiming that they need the files therein "for investigation". On-site backups are often hauled away as well. Furthermore, even assuming that you win eventually, and get all your stuff back undamaged, you can be sure that you'll be on the cops' "black list" for a long time to come, and that means numerous other problems.

So an alternative way to solve this problem was devised. For a small fee, some companies that normally sell boxed FLOSS software will sell you a "license". This is usually a plain print-out of a Russian translation of the corresponding FLOSS license for the actual software, but high-quality and performed on the patterned paper to give it that "legal" look. On top of that they slap a single page, which briefly says that "Company ABC is hereby given non-exclusive, time-unlimited, unrestricted right to use software XYZ on any number of workstations for any purpose", with company name being prominently printed so that even the dumbest inspector can read it (the page is obviously printed out separately for every customer). To top it, they also offer a holographic sticker that you can slap on the box to demonstrate as needed. What's even more important is that the record of purchase remains in your accounting books, so whichever way the inspectors try to dig, it all looks legit to them - the company paid some money, they've got a "license", and all computers have "stickers" - therefore it must be legit!

It would be damn funny if it wasn't so sad.

Re:There's a market for meaningless licenses.

[shutdown -p now]

Which makes me wonder... if it is in the public domain, couldn't anyone sell a license for it? And if that's the case, couldn't *I* sell a license for it, for cheaper?

Yes, absolutely. Just so long as you don't claim that you own copyright to it, and that all rights to SQLite are reserved to you exclusively (which is what AP does here).

Re:There's a market for meaningless licenses.

[mikiN]

Since it's less than 5 words, let me claim fair use and rehash them:

"Pioneer Papuan Patent Right Worker"

Re:There's a market for meaningless licenses.

[PitaBred]

Sure. Go for it. That's exactly what "public domain" means. If you can get a copy of it, you can do whatever you want with it. Why do you think Barnes and Noble can sell old public domain books?

Re:There's a market for meaningless licenses.

[falconwolf]

Yes, you can sell public domain works. No one can stop you since no one holds a copyright to it.

Hah, nice. That would be a hilarious business.

Barnes and Noble doesn't find it hilarious, except maybe to laugh while making deposits. B&N reprints a lot of classical books in the public domain.

Falcon

Re:There's a market for meaningless licenses.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm i'm honestly not sure what to beleive here.

If it were true it'd totally not suprise me in any form at all. Yet it reads like an anecdote from a friend of a friend who knows a dude.

Interesting thought nonetheless.

Re:Copy and paste the article text you want to use

[slashqwerty]

The Associated Press collects articles from reporters all over the world. I doubt those reporters submit articles royalty-free. How does the AP tie licensed text back to the article it applies to? Clearly they don't bother.

not surprising

[wizardforce]

considering AP is a company that doesn't allow anything resembling fair use is it really surprising tht they would show the kind of laziness demonstrated here? Assuming some court doesn't strike this nonsense down as a violation of fair use rights, the system is completely broken and should be either reformed greatly or abolished.

Re:not surprising

[Seth Kriticos]

You know that most articles have the "(source: AP)" tag on them in most major news outlets. Guess what: they are a damn big chunk of the system.

As for your assertion: morally and by the law of about 100 years ago the answer is yes, today..

Re:not surprising

[wizardforce]

if they can make more by cheating and/or laziness they should be expected to do so. this is not surprising, it is simply the result of millions of years of evolutionary selection- look out for you and yours through means available to you.

Re:not surprising

[Planesdragon]

Assuming some court doesn't strike this nonsense down as a violation of fair use rights

Fair Use is not a right. Free speech is a right. Fair Use is a defense against copyright infringement, due to the otherwise chilling affect it would have upon free speech.

And court's can't "strike down" private actions; they simply refuse to recognize them as legally valid.

Fun fact: when you make a contract (like the AP's license), there are three critically important things you should know:
1: Who wrote it. (You or them?)
2: What jurisdiction is covered (Do you just agree that you'd fly out to CA to defend yourself?)
3: What that jurisdiction has said about contracts like yours before.

Re:not surprising

[wizardforce]

Fair Use is not a right. Free speech is a right. Fair Use is a defense against copyright infringement, due to the otherwise chilling affect it would have upon free speech.

And court's can't "strike down" private actions; they simply refuse to recognize them as legally valid.

Fun fact: when you make a contract (like the AP's license), there are three critically important things you should know:
1: Who wrote it. (You or them?)
2: What jurisdiction is covered (Do you just agree that you'd fly out to CA to defend yourself?)
3: What that jurisdiction has said about contracts like yours before.

fair use as you already noted exists because if it did not free speech would often be greatly stifled. what really bothers me about what the AP is doing is that their definition of copyright allows for very little room for criticism using small sections of text. Theoretically with AP's policy of charging for small pieces of text [which in this case DID NOT BELONG TO THEM] they could go after critics for citing anything more than sentence fragments from their stories. fair use may not be a right but its existence is crucial to defending free speech and this development is troubling. with the length of copyright up to 120 years they could bash people for otherwise fair use activities as long as it is profitable to do so.

The system is an utter mess abused by AP and other interests against the public benefit and spirit of copyright law. Copyright exists only because we as a society wish to make a bargain with artists/writers etc. that we grant a limited monopoly on their produced work in exchange for it being released into the public domain at some point. The idea being that both parties form a cooperative symbiosis that gives producers of works a greater incentive to further produce these works. If the producers of these works are acting to destroy competition and abuse these limited monopoly "rights" then there is no reason for said protection from society to exist.

Re:Copy and paste the article text you want to use

[Liquidrage]

/thread

This is a non-story. Some dude wanted to prove a point no one should care to prove. And he did.

Maybe the real point isn't done yet. Maybe the real point is that tech-news places will post any drivel they can find as news that they can flimsily relate to "your rights" and technology.
If that is the case I eagerly await his follow up story.

go easy on them

[MrKaos]

Maybe they just think that no one has used those words in that particular order before.

Re:Copy and paste the article text you want to use

[Mendoksou]

Good point. And they did refund the money. I guess the flaw is assuming that the user wants to play by the rules, and I suppose we'd be complaining even at the unnecessary restrictions to account for the users who do not. We can make any machine look stupid when we misuse it.

The beef here I think is that they have the 'audacity' to sell the license... but now that I think about it, it's still a much better system than trying to contact a real person and deal with it. Still, I don't think it should be too hard to have a JavaScript check to see if the words come from the actual article. At the very least that might help prevent people from accidentally misquoting it if they are silly and type by hand or copy the wrong article or whatever.

Re:Copy and paste the article text you want to use

[interkin3tic]

Way to ruin the funny with your so called "english comprehension."

Anyway, it is still pretty funny that they "revoked" his "license" instead of laughing it off or pointing out that the real failure was his.

That's it...

[Thelasko]

I'm writing a computer program that will figure out every word combination that can possibly be used to form a sentence, and then copyrighting the output. When someone writes something somewhere, I'll sue them for copyright infringement.

Don't even think about stealing this idea. I have it patent pending on it!

Re:That's it...

[BabyDuckHat]

That's a surprisingly sound business plan. /weeps

Re:That's it...

[Planesdragon]

I'm writing a computer program that will figure out every word combination that can possibly be used to form a sentence, and then copyrighting the output. When someone writes something somewhere, I'll sue them for copyright infringement.

Oh, for the love of Stallman.

THAT'S HOW PATENTS WORK, NOT COPYRIGHTS!

Let's say that I, having never read so much as a synopsis of the book, sat down and wrote an almost word-for-word copy of Snowcrash (and let's just assume I can prove that first part in a court of law), and the only real difference being that I used different names for the main characters and the book itself. Do you know what Neal Stephenson's legal recourse would be if I started selling the darn thing?

NOTHING, BECAUSE I DID NOT COPY FROM HIM!

Your program would provide no benefit, because no court would believe that anyone would paw through the quadrillion pages of output your program would produce.

Re:That's it...

[Shikaku]

hurricane whooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooosh

Re:That's it...

[whisper_jeff]

Wow. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is someone missing the joke in a big way...

Re:That's it...

[idlemachine]

Don't even think about stealing this idea. I have it patent pending on it!

You might have to fight Wolfram Research over that idea...

Four words?

[T Murphy]

At least using "free as in beer" stays free as in beer.

Re:Four words?

[jd2112]

But you will still have to pay a license fee for the more gramatically accurate 'Free as in "Free Beer"'.

why is it great?

[commodoresloat]

All this tool does is count the number of words in a block of text. Every word processor and text editor I can think of has this feature already built in. And the premise that the copyright owner should be able to charge on a per-word basis (especially in text made up largely of quotations from other sources, as most AP articles are) is truly preposterous.

Re:why is it great?

[sbeckstead]

Why? Authors get paid by the word. What metric should they use?

Re:why is it great?

[Planesdragon]

And the premise that the copyright owner should be able to charge on a per-word basis

Stop.

A copyright holder can charge on any basis they damn well want. Either you have a valid fair use case, and can ignore them, or you don't, and have ZERO RIGHT to use their work without tehir say-so.

Re:why is it great?

[UncleTogie]

A copyright holder can charge on any basis they damn well want. Either you have a valid fair use case, and can ignore them, or you don't, and have ZERO RIGHT to use their work without tehir say-so.

What if it's a book of phrases in the public domain? Even better, what if it's something you've produced, like a talk or lecture as part of a seminar? Limiting the spread of information is not in the best interest of the public it's supposed to serve.

Re:why is it great?

[agrippa_cash]

Copyright exists to encourage new works. If your judgment, expressed through your selection and arrangement of public domain elements is more than minimal, you can claim a copyright. A book of public domain phrases used to tell a story would be copyrightable. A book of phrases in alphabetical order would not.

Re:why is it great?

[commodoresloat]

Nope. You can copyright works, not words; charging per-word is a legal fiction since you cannot own a copyright on any specific word. Setting aside for the moment the fact that you always have a right to create derivative works, though they are understood to be derivative. The copyright holder can't stop you from creating the works, but he/she can own some or all of the resulting works.

Re:why is it great?

[PCM2]

You can copyright works, not words; charging per-word is a legal fiction since you cannot own a copyright on any specific word.

Yes, but there is nothing about copyright that implies RAND licensing terms. If you plan to use my work in such a way that your use does not fall under the Fair Use doctrine, then you need to obtain a license from me to do so. If I want to charge some other guy $20 to license one of my copyrighted works, but I choose to charge you $2,000 to license the same work, that's my right. I can decide my fee based on the number of words you want to quote from my work, the number of lines, the size of your audience, the size of your nose, or any other basis I choose. I don't even need to disclose my method -- I could be counting words and not tell you about it. I could choose to allow everybody in the entire world to use my work for free except you, if I wanted to. So even if charging per-word is "a legal fiction," it doesn't matter; if I choose to live in a legally fictive world, that's my right, cuz I own the copyright and you do not. I alone get to choose my terms on a per-instance basis (provided the terms don't violate some other aspect of tort law).

Re:why is it great?

[amoeba1911]

If a book of phrases in alphabetical order is not copyrightable, neither is a list of words in alphabetical order. Why is it that Webster refused to give me a list of words in the English dictionary?

Re:Copy and paste the article text you want to use

[commodoresloat]

But I think his point was to ridicule the ridiculous assumption from AP that they should be able to restrict access to and license on a per-word basis any text "more than four consecutive words" in the first place. The Jefferson quote helps him make the point. The fact that the software is basically just a word counter adds a level of lol, but I don't think that was the main point of this experiment.

Godfatheads

[carrier lost]

I think it's delightful that the very thing (the internet) which has caused the various IP Mafia's to go all horse-head on everyone is the same thing that exposes their stupidity.

Re:Godfatheads

[HangingChad]

...is the same thing that exposes their stupidity.

I think that was the whole point to the exercise...missed by some above. The content provider trying to extort people into paying license fees they may not need. This exercise demonstrates that the content provider in question can't positively identify their own material or material that they can't legitimately claim as intellectual property. They can't conclusively back up the need for anyone to license a particular piece. They're ignoring the context, intended use and trying to rewrite fair use by their own definition.

This exercise exposes that it's a scam, an online shake down. I think it actually works against their IP claims.

Re:Godfatheads

[Anonymous Coward]

Except of course, that it shows nothing of the sort. The AP says if you want to buy a license to use part of an article, paste in the words, and they will sell you a license. If, at some point in the future they come across your work and see their words, you can show you have a license. If you are a moron and paste in other words, you have bought a license for nothing. That is no-ones fault but your own.

Please explain the 'extortion' and 'shakedown'. At what point in time did AP come after this idiot and demand to be paid for those words? Whats that? Never?

They certainly can back up the need for anyone to license a piece - if they own the copyright, you need a license.

No content provider is required to provide anything at all for 'fair use'. Fair use is a defense you may try to use if you are sued for infringement. A court will decide if it is fair use or not - the content provider can't (as in has no power to) 'rewrite' any fair use rules.

Re:Godfatheads

[Obfuscant]

I think that was the whole point to the exercise...missed by some above. The content provider trying to extort people into paying license fees they may not need.

And the point that you are missing is that NOBODY WAS EXTORTED.

The AP made no demands. The AP didn't track anyone down for using their words. The AP made no threats to get this yahoo to send them $12. They simply offered a service to him that allowed him to license material from them. They even let HIM determine what material he wanted to license.

The fact that he VOLUNTARILY licensed material that was in the public domain proves only that HE was stupid, not that AP was greedy.

This exercise demonstrates that the content provider in question can't positively identify their own material or material that they can't legitimately claim as intellectual property.

Oh, don't be silly. Of course they can identify their own material. All that THIS example proves is that THIS piece of software doesn't bother checking, it assumes that the CUSTOMER knows what he wants to license and has done what he was instructed: paste the text FROM THE ARTICLE.

They're ignoring the context, intended use and trying to rewrite fair use by their own definition.

Of course they are ignoring the intended use, because it isn't the job of this bit of software to CARE what the intended use is, it's the USER's job. If you know something is fair use, then why the hell would you offer the AP money to use it, unless you are a MORON?

This story is nothing more than an idiot walking into a store carrying something he already owned and asking the cashier to charge him for it. Ok, fine, they said. Here's what you can pay, if you want to. Ok fine, the moron said, here's your money!

God forbid we get to the point where we really do need laws to protect such morons from themselves, because NOBODY benefits when those kinds of laws are enacted.

Kdawson strikes again!

[Nethemas the Great]

I can has good submission now?

AP now authorizes free speech

[Anonymous Coward]

Quick! Get your AP-approved stamp for any block of text. Act now and get AP "permission" to post DeCSS code.

Hanlon's razor

[Ichijo]

Why would the AP charge for words it doesn't own? Is it malice or incompetence on their part?

Re:Hanlon's razor

[sbeckstead]

Why would you put words they don't own into their licensing software? Is it malice or stupidity on your part?

Re:Hanlon's razor

[Liquidrage]

He *offered* to pay them for words they don't own and they accepted his money since the mechanism for doing so does not check ownership. It's simply a word count. AP did not seek him out to collect charges. That is a big difference. In fact, that difference to me is why it's a non-story. Basically the AP is charging on a "per word" basis. So all they need to do count words. That someone decided to pay the AP for a worthless license and the AP decided to issue a worthless license doesn't mean anything. No laws were broken. No trust broken. No rights violated. The person did this with intent to gain a worthless license even. He got what he paid for.

Re:Hanlon's razor

[PeanutButterBreath]

Why would the AP charge for words it doesn't own? Is it malice or incompetence on their part?

Well, why would anyone request a license from AP for words that AP doesn't own? Is Grimmelmann too incompetent to figure out why the whole premise of his exercise is inane, or is he maliciously trying to portray AP as greedy when their only "sin" here is not making their systems impervious to idiots who would throw their money away?

Re:Hanlon's razor

[mdwh2]

To demonstrate how stupid it is. The whole point of the tool is to tell you how much (if any) you have to pay them - if you already know that, what's the point of the tool?

Consider, supposing I want to licence an article, and within that article is a large chunk of text that's quoted from Jefferson or whoever. This suggests that it would happily include those words in the cost calculation. I guess it's their right to charge whatever arbitrary value they like for a whole article, but this is all the more reason for stories like this to be publicised, so that people are aware of how the tool works. Plus, what if someone did want to quote a Jefferson quotation that happened to be in an article? The point is that they'll happily claim ownership, so it's important for people to be aware of how brain dead and simple the tool is.

Re:Hanlon's razor

[sbeckstead]

Or perhaps it's important to be more cognizant of the fact that Jefferson's work is public domain and you may quote him at your leisure. If you let them claim the copyright who's more the fool. And if you quote before and after the Jefferson quote you still owe them money even for the part that is Jefferson's because they have created a derivative work that includes some public domain words but the whole is copyrightable and therefore I see no problem with their tool. I think this is a non story trumped up to get the blogger hits.

Re:Hanlon's razor

[linzeal]

So how much to use 'Associated Press' ?

Re:Hanlon's razor

[TubeSteak]

That someone decided to pay the AP for a worthless license and the AP decided to issue a worthless license doesn't mean anything. No laws were broken. No trust broken. No rights violated. The person did this with intent to gain a worthless license even. He got what he paid for.

What if the guy had used a paragraph from Dr. Phil's latest book?
The AP accepted money and offered a license for a copyright they do not own.
That is a contract and is arguably fraud.

It's not as simple as "asshat does something stupid".

Re:Hanlon's razor

[roystgnr]

the mechanism for doing so does not check ownership.

No, but it asserts ownership:

"© Associated Press, 2009"

No laws were broken. No trust broken.

Probably not. The law says that false copyright claims "with fraudulent intent" are crimes punishable by up to $2,500, but I highly doubt that a judge would call the AP's scripting flaws "fraudulent intent".

At least not yet. We'll see if their program gets any smarter a month or a year from now. If their software can make them more money by selling invalid licenses based on false claims of copyright, you've got to wonder how long they can wait to fix that bug before some enterprising class action lawyer decides that they really consider it a feature instead.

The person did this with intent to gain a worthless license even.

This one did. But unless the AP's whole licensing server is worthless, it's got to be able to handle the case where someone wants to copy text from an AP story but doesn't know that the AP doesn't hold the copyright. Despite the AP's new "you have to pay us for five-word phrases!" policy, it seems they aren't keeping track of the five-word (or twenty-six-word) phrases that they've copied from others.

Re:Hanlon's razor

[Liquidrage]

I'm sure the law-people that work for the AP are smart enough to put a disclaimer on the license that would negate any and all possibilities of the "false copyright claim" you bring up. It would take all of 2 seconds to do.

The AP grants you to right to use the AP owned crap you submitted to the AP. If the stuff you submitted wasn't owned by the AP, GFY!

Pretty simple if you ask me. Basically you're getting the right from the AP for AP controlled crap. If the AP doesn't own it, that it's not "false copyright claim" it's worthless.

Re:Hanlon's razor

[shutdown -p now]

He *offered* to pay them for words they don't own and they accepted his money since the mechanism for doing so does not check ownership. It's simply a word count.

Actually, no, it does apparently check ownership (or at least tries to). If you RTFA and see the screenshot therein, you'll see that the system added the following attribution footer to it:

Excerpted from AP Sources: Military-civilian terror prison eyed as published in Associated Press

and then there's another footer underneath that claims:

(c) 2009 Associated Press

And the thing goes on to claim that excerpt can only be used exactly as written, and with both footers intact.

The problem is that the system is bugged - the original article they quote doesn't even contain that excerpt. The problem is that they claim it does, and that you need their license to reproduce it. Yes, it's a dumb machine that does it, but whose bright idea was it to put a machine in charge of handing out legal documents - which is what those "licenses" presumably are - in the first place?

Re:Hanlon's razor

[Liquidrage]

No, it does not. That is the article he used as a starting point before clicking on the link to obtain permission to use an except from the article. It does no checking.

Re:Hanlon's razor

[shutdown -p now]

That is the article he used as a starting point before clicking on the link to obtain permission to use an except from the article. It does no checking.

You are, indeed, correct - my apologies about getting this wrong (it's not very clear in the blog post). However, my final point - about the use of an automated system in such context being generally unacceptable because of high probability of legal issues - still stands.

Re:Hanlon's razor

[falconwolf]

That is the article he used as a starting point before clicking on the link to obtain permission to use an except from the article. It does no checking.

Ah but the AP claimed copyright, which was the problem. Before the AP claims copyright it should validate that claim.

Fslcon

Re:Hanlon's razor

[PitaBred]

The point is that the license is not valid in the first place. Read the words he pasted into their... the AP is trying to assert copyright over what would otherwise widely be looked at as fair use. Assuming they have this right is the first step to losing the right to free speech.

Re:Hanlon's razor

[PCM2]

What if the guy had used a paragraph from Dr. Phil's latest book?
The AP accepted money and offered a license for a copyright they do not own.
That is a contract and is arguably fraud.

Emphasis on the "arguably." The guy offers to pay AP money. In return, AP agrees not to assert any copyrights or other rights against the guy based on his use of Dr. Phil's work. And they won't! The fact that they could not have successfully done so anyway is (again, arguably) immaterial.

Look at it this way: If I sell you an elixir and I tell you it will grow hair on your head, and you use it and nothing happens, that might be fraud. If I sell you the same elixir and tell you that under no circumstances will it affect the hair on your head in any way, and you buy it and use it and no hair grows, is that fraud? Never mind that it couldn't have grown hair if I told you it would -- I never told you that it would. I told you it would do nothing, and you bought it anyway. Caveat emptor, my friend.

Re:Hanlon's razor

[TubeSteak]

The guy offers to pay AP money. In return, AP agrees not to assert any copyrights or other rights against the guy based on his use of Dr. Phil's work.

Wrong. You fundamentally mischaracterize and misunderstand what is happening.
"agrees not to assert any copyrights" and "license" are entirely separate things.

The guy offers to pay the AP money.
In return, the AP agrees to give him a license for X number of words.

A license implies the ability to license the item in question.
If, in return for money, I licensed you to use a car or house I don't own, that's fraud.
If you still don't believe me, I have some Linux lincenses I'd like to sell you for $600.

Re:Hanlon's razor

[Man Eating Duck]

Emphasis on the "arguably." The guy offers to pay AP money. In return, AP agrees not to assert any copyrights or other rights against the guy based on his use of Dr. Phil's work. And they won't! The fact that they could not have successfully done so anyway is (again, arguably) immaterial.

That may be so, but they do issue him with a requirement that he attach a copyright notice in which AP claims copyright on the quote (or in the example, Dr. Phil's work). I'm (luckily) no lawyer but I work at a publisher, and we are *damn* cautious about not putting a copyright claim on something that isn't ours... as that would be copyright fraud.

Reuters text?

[AhNewBis]

What if the AP sells you a license for text copyrighted by Reuters or any of the other wire services? Woah, man!

Re:Reuters text?

[bitt3n]

what if you buy a quotation that is itself quoting another AP article? Do you have to pay twice? What if the article is quoting itself? An infinite loop of profitability! Finally online content has a sustainable business model.

Re:Reuters text?

[Anonymous Coward]

someone should piece together an intelligent, thoughtful response using 3 word sequences from different AP articles.

Re:Reuters text?

[Mashiki]

Could be interesting. I've been quoted in several news articles(CP, AP, and AFP). I wonder if they owe me royalties now.

Re:Reuters text?

[Draek]

Unless their license allows relicensing to third parties, they'd likely get sued for copyright infringement and perhaps even fraud.

Wouldn't it be sweet?

Re:Reuters text?

[harlows_monkeys]

What if the AP sells you a license for text copyrighted by Reuters or any of the other wire services? Woah, man!

If they wrote their license right, what it says is that they grant a subset of any rights they have to the licensor, but does NOT say that they actually have any rights. In other words, if written right, the license is basically a promise that they won't sue you over copyright. It would leave it up to you to decide if you even need a license from them.

Re:Reuters text?

[proverbialcow]

Or, what if you did this?

We, the owners and management of the members of the Associated Press, hereby grant all licenses unto the public domain in perpetuity, and indemnify the licensees against legal action taken by members of the Associated Press..

© 2009 Associated Press

Re:Copy and paste the article text you want to use

[TubeSteak]

We can make any machine look stupid when we misuse it.

Rule #1: Never trust user input.

Still, I don't think it should be too hard to have a JavaScript check to see if the words come from the actual article.

LOL @ Javascript
They need a database of every AP article ever published.
Then they can either hash the pasted text & try to find
the source or they can require you to provide a citation.
Either way, you don't want to do that client-side with javascript.

Wow,

[sbeckstead]

Send this genius to my website, I'll sell him a bridge I don't own. Who would be stupid enough to pay someone for word he knows they don't own. If I were AP I would have kept his money.

Re:Wow,

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you see that? I think I saw the Big Picture fly right over your head.

Re:Wow,

[sbeckstead]

No I think you failed to grasp the stupidity of pasting text from something you "Know They Don't Own"(c) and then complaining to the world that they committed fraud by taking you're money. The directions clearly state that you should paste the text of their article that you wish to license. I wonder which word the genius didn't understand.

Re:Wow,

[Vexorian]

The big picture flew right over your head ages ago, I wonder if there's a way at all for you to see it. Maybe a cam streaming from a city in the arctic?

Re:Wow,

[falconwolf]

Send this genius to my website, I'll sell him a bridge I don't own. Who would be stupid enough to pay someone for word he knows they don't own. If I were AP I would have kept his money.

straw men are used by the irrelevant to stop people from demanding what they are due

Straw man such as the argument above?

Falcon

Re:Wow,

[sbeckstead]

You are way too close to the trees to see even the small picture I'm afraid. Copyright isn't the problem. The application of copyright is the problem and lazy people that want everything for free and don't want to have to obey any laws no matter how fair. They would rather complain that somebody took away their free stuff than go out and change the laws. You guys have power but obviously don't know how to use it. Let me know when you wake up enough to want to change the picture at all and I'll begin to care about your issues.

Re:Copy and paste the article text you want to use

[seanadams.com]

The Jefferson quote helps him make the point.

He may as well have quoted Elmer Fudd, since Jefferson was talking about inventions (patents), not copyright.

Re:Copy and paste the article text you want to use

[Liquidrage]

They don't need a database of every article published. They offered a service that made it easy to obtain permission to use text from works they hold a copyright of and someone purposefully misused the system to attempt to prove a *worthless* point.
Now, I find the whole need for the system stupid, I can't believe most uses wouldn't be under fair use anyways, and I'm sure the AP eats babies.

However, there is nothing inherently wrong with the service, all this person did is make me think he's an ass out trying to prove a misguided point. So the AP took his money when he went to them offering it? Wow! Horrible.

Get back to me when the AP sues him over misusing the system. That would be worthy of a story.

RIAA/MPAA

[syousef]

It's idiotic, but there is in fact a market for nothing: if you are correctly positioned as a trusted supplier

Finally! An explanation for the RIAA/MPAA and other association's sense of entitlement that we can all understand!

Re:Copy and paste the article text you want to use

[RedK]

Or they do a differed search for the licensed words and apply the royalties after the fact. Why would they need to find the article in real time ? They can just batch up requests and process them when there's less requests or on another system completely.

26 words???? what!????

[Anonymous Coward]

LICENSE FOR 26 WORDS ? THIS IS FUCKING RIDICULOUS!!!

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION?? WHERE? :(

Where is the world I knew 22 years ago...It's so sad the path we are taking... // Kyle, PT

Re:Copy and paste the article text you want to use

[sbeckstead]

Here here, mod parent up. Stupid is as stupid does.

parent is not trolling, get a clue mods

[Shakrai]

I see nothing wrong with what AP did here. This is like complaining that Comcast will let you pay your cable bill even if you don't watch any TV. Yeah, they will. So?

Why the heck is this modded troll? 'troll' != 'i disagree with this person'.

The parent raises a valid point. If you are stupid enough to offer me money for a copy of Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries, Thomas Jefferson's or William Shakespeare's writings or anything else in the public domain, why shouldn't I accept your money? The AP's software may be brain dead but to say that this represents an industry "smothering itself with a pillow" rather misses the point.

I would also add that of those cheering the downfall of the AP aren't likely to be too happy with the eventual consequences. The blogosphere may do a fair job of covering Washington (although most of it so slanted to one side or another as to make Fox News look fair and balanced) but the coverage of local issues and politics is sadly lacking.

Re:parent is not trolling, get a clue mods

[Brian Gordon]

I completely agree. If you bring your own bag of chips into a gas station mart, walk around a little, and then hand it to the cashier, they'll scan it and charge you.

I can see somebody at the AP raising an eyebrow and asking "So you want to pay us $12 to promise not to sue you for using text in the public domain? Uhhh OK we promise." It's the researcher that's baiting them and causing problems; there's no problem on their end.

Re:parent is not trolling, get a clue mods

[Harlequin]

I think the suggestion that it's brain-dead would work with your analogy thus. It's like going to a gas station and walking around a gas station that only sells Doritos and handing them a bag of Kettle Chips. Presumably, their system should read the bar code and tell you that they aren't sold there (how can it figure out how much to charge if they don't sell that product).

If you offer to license part of an article, you would similarly expect the AP system to at least do some sort of sanity check to see if the text you're quoting came from that article.

What if you made up a quote like "Today, Reuters announced they were declaring bankrupcy" and licensed it from the AP. Could you then attribute that quote to the AP? Do you think their system should allow that?

Re:parent is not trolling, get a clue mods

[amicusNYCL]

The parent raises a valid point. If you are stupid enough to offer me money for a copy of Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries, Thomas Jefferson's or William Shakespeare's writings or anything else in the public domain, why shouldn't I accept your money?

Are you serious? You don't see a problem with the AP selling a "license" to use content that it doesn't own in the first place? What if you go to some random article, say written by the BBC or CNN, and maybe you're not paying attention (I know, journalists not paying attention, it's a stretch but stick with me) and you go to get a license to use that text from the AP, which they happily sell to you and give you a bunch of copyright info etc to use which says that you are legally allowed to post that content. You really don't see an issue there? The AP is taking your money and telling you that they are giving you rights which aren't actually theirs to give in the first place. At best that's gross incompetence, at worst it's fraud.

Re:parent is not trolling, get a clue mods

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, if I pay you money for Wagner then you can just take it and smile.

However, AP doesn't do only that. They also claim copyright on the work and add limits to how you can use it.

On the other hand, even if it's really dumb I agree with you that it doesn't qualify as "smothering itself with a pillow".

Re:parent is not trolling, get a clue mods

[mdwh2]

Yes, just like when the ATM hands me £20 notes instead of £10 notes, it's fair game for me to keep it.

Oh wait, it's not. The law has shown that actually, even if the company gives me the money, it's not my right to take it, if it was reasonably given by mistake.

So when it's an individual who makes the mistake, and a company takes advantage, why should that be any different? It's not appropriate to take advantage of a faulty ATM, and it shouldn't be appropriate to take advantage of a faulty input to this software.

Re:parent is not trolling, get a clue mods

[mino]

Sigh, what a total non-story this is. It's an estimation tool, people. If you're dumb enough to use it in the wrong way, then... you know, hooray for you.

It's like a tool on a carpenter's website to get a fence built. Fill in what material you want, how high the fence will be, the perimeter of your block, and whether you want it finished or painted. The site gives you a quote for the fence. Then ring the carpenter, say "I've got the money now, can I pay you BEFORE you do the job?". Give the carpenter the money, and OH HA HA MR CARPENTER I SURE TRICKED YOU I JUST PAID YOU TO BUILD A FENCE FOR A PROPERTY THAT'S NOT EVEN MINE THAT IS THE HOUSE NEXT DOOR I AM SO CLEVAR.

Err.. yeah, good for you, I guess. Want a cookie?

How is this noteworthy?

Re:parent is not trolling, get a clue mods

[mdwh2]

You could like, not use them all if they're unneeded?

(I can't remember the last time I had mod points - it was years ago. No wonder moderation is going downhill if some people are getting ridiculous amounts of them, so they get to use them to mod down everyone they disagree with, whilst other people don't get any anymore...)

Re:parent is not trolling, get a clue mods

[Brian Gordon]

take advantage

Yes, taking the piles of money that people leave on my doorstep is taking advantage.

The guy is knowingly paying the AP for something free. They're not taking advantage of him. And even if someone was legitimately stupid enough to pay the AP for Thomas Jefferson's material, it's not their fault. Should I erect a fence around my doorstep so people don't leave piles of money?

Re:parent is not trolling, get a clue mods

[DriedClexler]

What if you made up a quote like "Today, Reuters announced they were declaring bankrupcy" and licensed it from the AP. Could you then attribute that quote to the AP? Do you think their system should allow that?

Quick! Someone do this before the AP fixes its software! I bet they'll spend the next year or two sorting through the fallout of such an attribution...

Re:parent is not trolling, get a clue mods

[2short]

"What if you made up a quote like "Today, Reuters announced they were declaring bankrupcy" and licensed it from the AP. Could you then attribute that quote to the AP?"

No, obviously.

"Do you think their system should allow that?"

If I tell you "The sentence in question is 7 words long.", do you interpret that as authorization to claim I said it? MSWord does word counts, does that mean I can attribute anything I type into it as an official MS position? Does Chewbacca live on Endor?

Re:parent is not trolling, get a clue mods

[Brian Gordon]

It's like going to a gas station and walking around a gas station that only sells Doritos and handing them a bag of Kettle Chips. Presumably, their system should read the bar code and tell you that they aren't sold there

Yes we should enact laws to protect innocent consumers defrauded by insisting on paying for their own chips.

What if you made up a quote like "Today, Reuters announced they were declaring bankrupcy" and licensed it from the AP. Could you then attribute that quote to the AP?

What does purchasing a license have to do with journalistic attribution?

Re:parent is not trolling, get a clue mods

[residieu]

Yes, and when they were informed of the mistake, they gave the money back. Just like when you notice the 20 pound notes, you gave the money back.

Re:parent is not trolling, get a clue mods

[Albanach]

While I can see the argument that it's unfair to charge for a license to words they don't own, it does raise other issues. There's a risk of them selling a license to something that's copyright which they don't own. What use is a licensing service if you still have to do due diligence afterwards?

Secondly, even where they did cover an event, they may end up selling rights to quotations or even speeches they don't own.

Here's an example: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hEgzmDPlmhHVfmc1U9rZXLmsQiuwD999J9Q00

An entire speech by Obama four weeks ago, reprinted by the AP. The final line reads "Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. "

Did the AP write the speech? They claim copyright over it and reserve all rights to it. Presumably they'll happily charge many hundreds of dollars to anyone wanting to reprint it to. Now to most folk, a speech by Obama would be obviously not owned by the AP, but what about quotes from other people?

Re:parent is not trolling, get a clue mods

[digitalunity]

I still don't get it.

Can I please be provided yet another analogy? I'm too stupid to read the article and understand the meaning of the words contained therein.

Maybe something involving cars. Thanks.

Re:parent is not trolling, get a clue mods

[Shakrai]

Are you serious? You don't see a problem with the AP selling a "license" to use content that it doesn't own in the first place?

I would see a problem with it if they were doing it out of malice or with an intent to defraud. Do you really think that's the case here?

What if you go to some random article, say written by the BBC or CNN, and maybe you're not paying attention and you go to get a license to use that text from the AP, which they happily sell to you and give you a bunch of copyright info etc to use which says that you are legally allowed to post that content.

Then that's your own fault. If I'm in a shopping mall and present an item from "Store A" for purchase at "Store B" and said item comes up with a price when scanned is that really the fault of "Store B"? It's my own fault for walking out of "Store A" without paying or for paying twice. "Store B" had no intent to defraud me or "Store A"

The AP is taking your money and telling you that they are giving you rights which aren't actually theirs to give in the first place. At best that's gross incompetence, at worst it's fraud.

Fraud? It's fraud on their part when you present the item to them for purchase? That's a bit of a stretch. Fraud is a criminal matter and most criminal acts require intent. Mistakes != fraud.

Re:parent is not trolling, get a clue mods

[turbidostato]

"If you are stupid enough to offer me money for a copy of Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries, Thomas Jefferson's or William Shakespeare's writings or anything else in the public domain, why shouldn't I accept your money?"

Because it's fraud?

Re:parent is not trolling, get a clue mods

[turbidostato]

"If you bring your own bag of chips into a gas station mart, walk around a little, and then hand it to the cashier, they'll scan it and charge you. "

Even if it happens to be a chips brand not sold on that station mark? Is really the cashier going to say "uhhh... this bar code doesn't show up on my inventory, so I'll bill you, uhhh... a nickle"? No, I don't think so, but that's exactly what has been done in this case: they don't sell Jefferson's chips but they still cash for them.

Re:parent is not trolling, get a clue mods

[Brian Gordon]

On the other hand, if every in the "26 word" store costs $12, then there's no need to scan it. It's like at a dollar store, every item costs the same.

Re:parent is not trolling, get a clue mods

[gbarules2999]

You drive up onto a Ford lot in your Subaru and then when you drive away they demand that you pay them for the Subaru.

Re:parent is not trolling, get a clue mods

[sleeper0]

Amen. Trying to trick someone into taking your money and then acting like it's a violation of your civil rights when they do is the kind of shit 8 year olds pull. Classic blogger controversy.

Re:parent is not trolling, get a clue mods

[mikiN]

Not fraud maybe, but rather criminal negligence.

Suppose someone buys from AP a license to use words that aren't theirs to license. Suppose this person then gets sued by the rightful owner of the copyright on those words. The claim to have a license from AP gets rejected. Where can the parties claim damages?

Re:parent is not trolling, get a clue mods

[shutdown -p now]

Sigh, what a total non-story this is. It's an estimation tool, people.

Where did you get the "estimation tool" analogy from? From reading TFA, it is clear that he wasn't just told that he'd need to pay "about $12" to license this. No, he was actually asked to pay $12, paid, and received a license. How is this an estimation tool if it actually sells you stuff? It is an automated sale system that sells stuff that its owner is not entitled to sell. Furthermore - and much worse - said automated system also makes legal claims in the name of its owner - "(c) Associated Press. All rights reserved" - that are outright false.

Re:parent is not trolling, get a clue mods

[shutdown -p now]

They are lying to him that Jefferson's words are copyrighted by them, and can only be used under the terms of their license. See the screenshot in TFA.

Re:parent is not trolling, get a clue mods

[jesset77]

It's like at a dollar store, every item costs the same.

I see, so you've never been to a dollar store.

Go some time. Not only will you find inexpensive knickknacks and junk, but you'll see that they scan every single thing. Two reasons:

Firstly, not everything is really a dollar. Some things are X for a dollar.

Secondly, for those of you not lucky enough to live in Oregon, they'll calculate sales tax and I don't believe all items tax just the same way. For example, some items may be exempt.

Thirdly, to give you a receipt. You know, listing what you have actually bought that you physically take from their possession and care into your own? So that everyone can keep track of liability if some piece of candy you buy turns out to be laced with arsenic? So that you won't be charged for things they don't sell?

AP has built a website claiming to use automated processes to sell you license to any collection of words they have a right to. This article is a story because AP's software simply ignores that last part instead of actually doing the only work a copyright holder is even required to do in the current legal system. Refunds and being charged for things have nothing to do with the matter. The issue at hand is simply demonstrating that there is no product being sold here. This is like charging the public $100 a pop for bottled water that you are secretly just filling from the tap, and then suing anyone you see drinking any water at all who can't show a receipt that they bought a bottle from you. How can AP justify demanding renumeration from the public for using their material if they cannot even recognize their own material?

Every day I am amazed how more and more copyright apologists seem to forget that money should never be expected to change hands unless there is some counterweight of value being provided by the vendor. Either the "licence" you get from this website actually shifts liability over the content agreed upon from yourself to AP, or else what purpose does it serve at all? Is this nothing more than a complicated donation box?

Re:parent is not trolling, get a clue mods

[deltharius]

"If you are stupid enough to offer me money for a copy of Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries, Thomas Jefferson's or William Shakespeare's writings or anything else in the public domain, why shouldn't I accept your money?"

Because it's fraud?

Whew! Good to know. Now I can go sue Amazon, Borders, Barnes & Noble, various book publishers, music publishers, etc. for the fraud they have been committing in taking money for copies of those things.

It's almost like it's legal to sell things that are in the public domain. Heck, next thing you know people might even be able to copyright public domain material... Oh, wait, you can! It doesn't remove the original version from the public domain, but my recording of Ride of the Valkyries, or my selection and arrangement of Jefferson or Shakespeare writings can be copyrighted to myself.

Fraud? Not hardly.

Re:parent is not trolling, get a clue mods

[jesset77]

It's like a tool on a carpenter's website to get a fence built.

Except that carpenters are not in the business of keeping track of intellectual property.

It's actually more like using a website constructed by a municipality to approve building permits. You key in the area where you wish to build, website calculates the fee, takes payment online, and you print your legally binding permit without getting out of your jammies.

Several months and millions of construction dollars later, the state tries to sue you for building on land with the wrong zoning and code. You flourish your permit which states that the city is in charge of the zoning for that parcel, and you have their approval. State reps tell you the city has overstepped their bounds and takes you to court. Now is the city going to go to bat for you because their software loused everything up for you, or let you blow in the wind?

Grimmelmann had the good sense to test the service before anyone was put in a similar position (getting sued after paying AP for copy AP never owned). The service is broken, and the message is that you should never trust AP to keep track of their own goods. If you pay them money through this website, the money might as well be burned because you get no service from AP as a result. If the agreement they forge with you cannot protect you from third parties, why should we believe it will protect you from AP on legit content? You think they won't charge you for the licence and then find a way to sue you once you print anyway? They could even cite this article in court to demonstrate how worthless the licence is. :P

Re:parent is not trolling, get a clue mods

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what I mean. -1 Disagree is the way it's going here.

I rarely ever run out of mod points because I try not to be a dick and by the time I read an article, everyone else has gotten there first. All the high value stuff, the stuff that's interesting to read, has already been modded. By the time I get to the end on -1, I've spent way too much time reading and I've got geek fatigue so I end up running out of steam and not modding.

15 points every 3 days. Quite literally, 3/4 days, I have mod points. These days, I read /. and it's a little unusual for me to not have mod points. I don't value them anymore.

Re:parent is not trolling, get a clue mods

[jesset77]

TFA is not upset about the loss of $12 in bait, he was upset by the non-product delivered. If AP cannot tell if text belongs to them or not, then they cannot legally licence you to use it, which is precisely what this web tool claims to do.

Re:parent is not trolling, get a clue mods

[Dragonslicer]

Not quite. The correct car analogy would be:

You drive up onto a Ford lot in your Subaru and then when you hand the salesman money, he takes it and says "Have a nice day."

Re:parent is not trolling, get a clue mods

[jesset77]

If I tell you "The sentence in question is 7 words long.", do you interpret that as authorization to claim I said it?

Yeah, pretty much. If you say something, I assume it is ok to claim that you said it.

MSWord does word counts, does that mean I can attribute anything I type into it as an official MS position?

Oh I'm sorry, you are in the wrong thread. This article is about licence.icopyright.net, a self-service website created by AP specifically to charge for and provide copyright licence to article quotes. You are looking for the "AP launches word-counting service to put M$ Office in it's place" thread, I sadly do not have a link for that.

Thanks for trying! :D

Re:parent is not trolling, get a clue mods

[Anonymous Coward]

Still not right. You drive onto a Ford lot in your Subaru then ask the salesman how much you owe him. He tells you an amount and you pay it.

Re:parent is not trolling, get a clue mods

[jesset77]

Really though, this has nothing to do with accidentally overpaying. This has to do with being sold non-goods.

It's like paying $12 to buy a raffle ticket which is demonstrably invalid, just to prove that the rafflers have no intent on honoring any of the legit-seeming tickets that they sell. They just take your money and then forget you exist.

Thus, TFA could care less about the $12 he sacrificed on his point. He cares about the $X arbitrary journalists around the world might pay for the licence to quote articles without being sued, given that AP cannot and will not defend you from suit because they cannot even correctly tell if they have a right to the material you are asking about.

Re:parent is not trolling, get a clue mods

[Anonymous Coward]

You drive up onto a Ford lot in your Subaru, then you walk up to the salesman and ask him how much for your Suburau, the salesman gives you a price so you whip out your credit card and pay it.

Fixed that for you.

Re:parent is not trolling, get a clue mods

[jesset77]

I would see a problem with it if they were doing it out of malice or with an intent to defraud. Do you really think that's the case here?

Yeah, pretty much.

What is it with everyone tripping over the fact that the experiment is contrived? Yes, Grimmelmann knew that the words were not in the article when he paid for them. So what happens when Source A prints a story that says "copyright AP" at the bottom, and you go to quote the story, so you use AP's copyright tool to do so? Then the true author of the story sues you and source A (and probably the AP to boot) for the fiasco. Will your licence from AP indemnify you from harm? Or will they refund you $0.46/word while you pay someone else thousands in damages?

The point is that AP cannot keep track of what they own and what they do not. A store is a bad analogy because AP does not DOES NOT have an inventory. They do not have walls. They are just standing out in the field with a cash register. Apparently, you can bring them any rock or twig and they will happily take your money in exchange for their blessing, and apparently some people are wandering around, getting twigs, and then AP sues them. However, there is NO authoritative way for non AP members to tell what AP claims to own.

I believe AP is fully aware of this and is happy to take money from any sucker and refuse to provide a service when needed. If it's like anything, it's like being sold bad insurance. It's like using a contrived example to get a CA to certify a clearly invalid certificate, showing that the CA does not actually certify anything at all.

Re:parent is not trolling, get a clue mods

[mino]

The instructions say, pretty clearly, "copy and paste the article text you want to use", not "copy and paste some random guff you want to prove a point with". If you don't follow the instructions then, no, the results you get won't be valid. Surprise.

The rights they're granting you are clearly 'the rights not to be sued by AP for quoting their text', not anything else -- not rights against being sued by any third party or anything else. It's rights licensing, not insurance. Likewise, if YOU screw up the building permit form, yes, the city are within their rights to let you swing in the breeze as far as I'm concerned. But if you didn't then, sure, they'd better honour their commitment, as (hopefully) AP will.

It's a braindead web app, yes, and AP do a bunch of other stuff that's dumb and/or evil. But claiming that it's some elaborate IP fraud scheme to allow a stupid web app to accept incorrect input and print out some boilerplate text around it is a cheap shot, and dumb.

Re:parent is not trolling, get a clue mods

[PitaBred]

It's not an estimation tool if they charge you based on it. It's a sales tool. Or are the prices you see on Amazon just estimations as well?

Re:parent is not trolling, get a clue mods

[TaoPhoenix]

It's noteworthy because it's not carpentry, it's copyright.

Over on the other topic we discovered that violation of copyright is worth some $600,000+ to 1.92 Million.

So the claim that "the user has all burden to check their submission for copyright legality before submitting it to our license software" is what's at stake here.

Re:parent is not trolling, get a clue mods

[sleeper0]

No, he was upset about the AP's stance on fair use relating to works they actually hold a copyright on, found a flaw in their software about something unrelated, exploited it and got the knee-jerk YRO crowd all riled up. Because he wanted to fuck with them because they pissed him off on another issue. Congrats on not letting him down.

Re:parent is not trolling, get a clue mods

[jjohn_h]

>>>
If you bring your own bag of chips into a gas station mart, walk around a little, and then hand it to the cashier, they'll scan it and charge you.
>>>

Not necessarily so. That particular bag of chips must be on their database as one of their products on offer.

Re:parent is not trolling, get a clue mods

[Anonymous Coward]

I still don't understand... do you have a car analogy?

Re:parent is not trolling, get a clue mods

[bzipitidoo]

On the contrary, this is another demonstration of how broken copyright is.

There is an expectation that the AP's service not slyly let you "buy" quotes they don't know they "own". What if you misquoted one tiny little word, you know, like "one small step for a man"? And then you think you've paid for the right to use that quote, you use it, and then suddenly you're being sued because you got the quote wrong? Their software ought to at least check, and warn the buyer if it can't find the quote. This should not be buyer beware.

But all that is moot. They don't own our language! They should have no standing whatsoever to ask such a thing of people. 4 words! Pay for just 4 words! Unbelievable. Quoting small portions of a work has long been established as fair use. If these idiots actually convince the public that paying for a license is the new norm, they will find just how awful an idea it was when they themselves start having to pay for everything. They're always asking public figures for quotes. How would it be if they had to pay all these politicians, business leaders, actors, sports stars, and victims for all those quotes, or they demanded that all interviewees sign waivers?

Re:parent is not trolling, get a clue mods

[91degrees]

Fine. Go to the pick and mix, and throw in a load of sweets they don't sell.

This is like charging the public $100 a pop for bottled water that you are secretly just filling from the tap, and then suing anyone you see drinking any water at all who can't show a receipt that they bought a bottle from you.

Nobody is suing anyone.

How can AP justify demanding renumeration from the public for using their material if they cannot even recognize their own material?

Nobody is demanding anything.

Either the "licence" you get from this website actually shifts liability over the content agreed upon from yourself to AP, or else what purpose does it serve at all? Is this nothing more than a complicated donation box?

They're offering you their permission. AP agree that they have consented to you using content that you believe to be owned by them. Why is it their responsibility to protect you from being an idiot and paying for permission for something you don't need a licence for?

Re:parent is not trolling, get a clue mods

[Shakrai]

I see two problems with claiming criminal negligence:

1) The person buying the article failed to exercise due diligence when he attempted to purchase it from the wrong place. If there's any negligence here it's on him and not the AP.
2) Any negligence here doesn't rise to the level to criminal negligence anyway. Criminal negligence almost always requires an action that places another in physical danger, i.e: excessive speed, driving drunk, etc. Placing another at risk of a civil lawsuit != criminal negligence.

The claim to have a license from AP gets rejected. Where can the parties claim damages?

You could try to sue the AP for your damages but you'd be laughed out of most courtrooms for failing to exercise due diligence when you bought the article in the first place.

Re:parent is not trolling, get a clue mods

[rgarbacz]

In my opinion the analogy with mart or gas station is biased. It is more like one wrote his own book then went to a book store and asked "is it yours?", and got an answer "of course, you have to pay, and cannot use it in other way as to read silently for yourself". The point was to show that their, so called "software" is a one line code "isOurs() { return true; }".

One cannot build a sane legal system on the idea that one entity claims by default the ownership of all the goods, and if by chance one owns something, it is his responsibility to prove they are wrong. Of course it has not happened yet, but the presented story shows it is the way it goes.

Re:parent is not trolling, get a clue mods

[Lemmy Caution]

You ever go to those supermarkets that have the "scan it yourself" stations? You run your bag of chips under a scanner and bag it yourself? If Ford lots had those scanners, then your analogy would work.

Re:parent is not trolling, get a clue mods

[amicusNYCL]

1) The person buying the article failed to exercise due diligence when he attempted to purchase it from the wrong place. If there's any negligence here it's on him and not the AP.

The AP also needs to do due diligence. When the AP is selling a license to something, they need to do due diligence to make sure that they are actually able to sell what they're trying to sell. If I paste in a copyrighted book, they aren't allowed to sell me a license to reproduce that online (which is what their boilerplate says I have the right to do).

But no, it's not criminal and it's not malicious. It's just lazy. The fact is that if they are giving me a license that says that I am legally allowed to do a certain thing, they need to make sure that those statements are correct.

Re:parent is not trolling, get a clue mods

[2short]

"If you say something, I assume it is ok to claim that you said it."

Reading comprehension: Try it sometime. Hint : What is the 'sentence in question' I'm reffering to? Bonus hint: It is seven words long, but I never said it, so you shouldn't claim I did just because I counted the words.

On the other hand, if you send me fifty bucks for a copyright license to the sentence I never said, that's cool. I won't sue you for copyright violation, but unlike the AP, I'd keep the money.

"This article is about licence.icopyright.net, a self-service website created by AP specifically to charge for and provide copyright licence to article quotes."

Oddly, I don't see "verify and confirm authorship" in even your list of the sites intended functions. Almost like it makes no attempt to do any such thing.

Re:parent is not trolling, get a clue mods

[jesset77]

Why is it their responsibility to protect you from being an idiot and paying for permission for something you don't need a licence for?

Grimmelmann has rendered a test case to illustrate a flaw in a piece of software. Like all test cases, it involves purposefully following steps which would lead to failure. Test cases exist to expose flaws before any person accidentally triggers the same condition in the wild. But then again, you probably think the Q&A engineers at Honda are "idiots" for intentionally crashing cars.

The fact is this tool is useless. It's a fancy donation box and a political stunt to attempt to demonstrate a market for copyright over citation.

No AP subscriber needs this service since their subscription alone allows them full use of AP content. Non-subscribers have no access to the raw feed, so if they choose to cite a news source there is no guarantee the text they cite really comes from AP. It could be a piece from Reuters where the journalist hastily slapped on the wrong copyright notice. It could be an AP piece, but the journalist in question did his own research to add data, and that's the data you are pulling from.

So what right does AP have charging the public for text they cannot confirm is theirs? The public has no way of knowing, and can only trust the primary source (who may have been negligent, or else may sue for citing extended content without their permission) and AP themselves. If AP cannot be bothered to compare your submission with the text in their own bloody article, then they are providing zero service.

Fine. Go to the pick and mix, and throw in a load of sweets they don't sell.

Or to compare with a situation we actually care about, one in the wild. Go to pick and mix (I've never heard of them) and try to buy sweets after someone else has tainted the bin. Should PnM not be held liable if you and a dozen other people contract anthrax from their candy?

Re:parent is not trolling, get a clue mods

[jesset77]

Reading comprehension: Try it sometime

I'm sorry, I am accustomed to practitioners of the English language using pronouns to refer to no more than one neutral subject at a time. You know, in order to avoid ambiguity. Your sentence ended with both an "it" and a "that" which easily could have refered to the same subject. Of course these are pronouns, so you could have intended them to refer to your head and your arse. I choose the most immediately obvious rendering instead. Take a course on Writing and Composition if you wish to get your meaning across more reliably next time.

FWIW though, "The sentence in question is 7 words long." is totally a sentence, albeit eight words long.. the way the rest of your post was going I didn't feel as though your talking about word counting and then failing to do so accurately yourself was such a surprise.

Oddly, I don't see "verify and confirm authorship" in even your list of the sites intended functions.

Neither do I, though I do see at the end of that list "provide copyright licence to article quotes". I see that instead of "promise not to sue".

You see, oddly enough the two are not in any way the same thing. Licensors make no promise not to sue licensees, instead they grant limited privileges over the work licensed. Overstep the privilege, or simply confuse the licensor and they will still sue you (though if you are in the right and can prove it then you'll win). However, (and IANAL but) providing licences to rights you do not own has got to be illegal. You know, sort of like printing fake driver's licences, selling someone the Brooklyn Bridge, office space when you don't own the building, etc.

Re:parent is not trolling, get a clue mods

[GargamelSpaceman]

I could have reasonably not noticed that the ATM gave me an extra 20 instead of a 10, and then gone on and spent it. If it's gone, then allowing the company to claw it back from me has damaged me by screwing up my finances. ( now I owe them 10 bucks. ) If I were a judge and the customer sued the ATM company for lying to him about how much money he had withdrawn by giving him too much money, I would award damages to the ATM customer of 10 bucks nullifying the clawback. Increase the amounts involved ( say a bank error ) to any sub-million dollar amount and my decision is likely to remain the same.

Re:parent is not trolling, get a clue mods

[2short]

"I'm sorry, I am accustomed to practitioners of the English language using pronouns to refer to no more than one neutral subject at a time. You know, in order to avoid ambiguity."

You are 'accustomed' to good writing? On Slashdot? Really?

In any case, my sentence was poorly constructed and ambiguous, certainly. It had two possible meanings. Only one of those meanings was coherent and relevant in the context of the post I was replying to; the other was a nonsensical non-sequitor. You chose to assume I meant the latter, because you preferred being able to mock your own misinterpretation than being able to understand my meaning.
    If you find such rhetorical wanking satisfying, enjoy. Personally, I don't find it leads to interesting conversations.

"However, (and IANAL but) providing licences to rights you do not own has got to be illegal"

The guy lied to the AP (or rather their software), telling them they owned a piece of text and offering to pay them for it. Taken in by his deception, they accepted the money. When he said "Gotcha!", they gave the money back (with, one assumes, some befuddlement). Clearly, they have committed a dastardly crime.

Re:parent is not trolling, get a clue mods

[mikiN]

PP and GPP: good points. The more I think about it, fraud seems actually to be the most likely here.

AP selling licenses to things it cannot grant a license to. Now compare this to someone selling tickets to concerts on a website, for the sale of which he has no license. A classic example of fraud. To make things worse, in this analogy, AP allows people to fill in the name of the act and the name of the venue themselves!

Re:Copy and paste the article text you want to use

[rm999]

Did you try it? When I clicked on the licensing link "Click here for copyright permissions" the URL was tagged with a key: http://license.icopyright.net/3.5721?icx_id=D99RNEOO2

Those numbers appear to be different for each article.

Found Step 2!

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow...the plan...it..makes sense....more than 3 steps...but...still

Step 1: Publish & copyright some document
Step 2: Get content quoted by AP
Step 3: Request license to use my own material from AP
Step 4: Sue for infringement, with the license they sold me to use my own material as a confession that they consider that snippet substantial and valuable enough to copyright--collect $150k per publication.

kind of a stupid complaint...

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course the software is stupid... designing software that would detect whether the text was copyrighted by AP or not would be prohibitively expensive... which defeats the whole point of the software.

The point of the software is to sell cheap licenses. That's it. If the text you are using is fair use, don't buy a license. If it's not fair use, or it's a gray area, then you can use their tool to buy a license on the cheap.

I would also point out to everyone here that there is no defined word limit on what is and what is not fair use. Fair use is analyzed in courts using a four factor test, and the amount taken is only *one* of the factors used. Depending on how the other factors turn out, there could be no fair use even for a very short quote.

Re:kind of a stupid complaint...

[falconwolf]

designing software that would detect whether the text was copyrighted by AP or not would be prohibitively expensive.

Bullshit, this is what's stupid. AP already has a registry of copyrighted works. All the licensing software needs to do is search that registry. I have never had a computer that could not do searches, heck I've used the search built into my browser a number of tyme today.

I would also point out to everyone here that there is no defined word limit on what is and what is not fair use.

However AP is claiming more than 4 words, they not a court. Of course they wouldn't try to collect over a hand full of words, at least I don't think they would, because they'd get laughed out of court. I bet there isn't any 5 word string in what I'm typing now that has not been used a lot of tymes. Even if you include my spelling of time as "tyme".

Falcon

Painfully stupid story

[Anonymous Coward]

All the AP is offering to sell you is a license to tread on any copyright they may own with regard to the work in question. In the article's case, they didn't have any copyright to enforce with regard to Jefferson's work, and the author was stupid to pay for something he didn't need a license to reproduce.

Tell you what: send me the address of a parcel of real estate and $45 per parcel, and I will execute a deed disclaiming any interest I might have in the parcel(s) you've selected. That's essentially what the AP is doing here, but in my example, it's obvious that the guy paying the $45 is the idiot, not the guy receiving it.

The whole thing reminds me of an ancient Slashdot troll, whose posts consisted entirely of "Don't forget to pay your $600 SCO licensing fee, you cock-smoking teabags!" How come we didn't get stories sympathetic to people who actually paid SCO for something that SCO didn't have the right to sell them in the first place?

Re:Copy and paste the article text you want to use

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm afraid the AP has a code deficiency. You you telling me they cannot validate the text against their OWN article database before "licensing" its usage? Are they arrogant enough to assume that almost all combination of words that been used in their reports? They apparently got the credit card automation to work properly.

This is behavior you would expect from some cheesy Nigerian scam artists, not a supposedly prestigious news source.

Sorry the AP deserves the embarrassment they got.

Re:Copy and paste the article text you want to use

[commodoresloat]

True - I considered writing "The Jefferson quote, however out of context..." but I figured that was a separate issue...

Re:Copy and paste the article text you want to use

[j1mmy]

What if Jefferson's quote had been used in the article?

A question of volume

[velen]

Given the volume of data AP processes in a day and the requests for copying information, they are liable to make mistakes. The fact remains that they issued a refund of sorts, so it is clear that they have a review process in place. The licensing software can be better, but that is a different issue. I don't see any reason to mock AP for this one. The author pretty much does a "HA! HA! I fooled you and wasted your time!". Pathetic.

Re:Copy and paste the article text you want to use

[JonChance]

I'm afraid Mr. Grimmelman has a severe English comprehension deficiency. The instructions are a single sentence, clear as day. It says paste the article text you want to use. Not " paste whatever you like, and if our javascript form counts the words for you then consider it assertion of copyright by us.".

No , Mr. Grimmelman is an incredibly talented smart-ass. Two thumbs up for the quote , another two for exposing the software / programming flaw. I'll even give it another two thumbs up for , in general , creating all of this debate and pissing in somebody's wheaties. You have an absolutely wonderful day

you mean FUD right? ...

[bukuman]

Can you provide a link to substantiate your claim? I had trouble finding anything definitive.

Also for everyone's reference here is a more complete quote of Jefferson:

If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation.

Four words?

[Dirtside]

That is the dumbest... Damn! Can I get a license to finish this, AP?

Re:Copy and paste the article text you want to use

[Planesdragon]

How does the AP tie licensed text back to the article it applies to?

They do it by not paying royalties -- they do it by buying a license to distribute the article to others.

Let's say that you're, oh, a novelist with a 100,000 word novel, and a choice of how to get your payment. You can get paid 10% off the top for every one of your $10 books sold, OR you can get a $.10 a word for the right for the publisher to print your novel, and keep all the profit (or risk) to themselves.

If you're Stephen King, and can expect to easily sell way over 10,000 copies, you insist on the first deal. But if you're, oh, a nameless nobody, the $10k looks pretty good. Especially if you're already on to your next project, and need to feed your kids. And if you're a publisher that sells a LOT of almost randomly selected books, the latter looks good to you too--because you pay a fair amount of money to a lot of authors, and so get that lot of books you depend on.

Re:Copy and paste the article text you want to use

[PCM2]

The Associated Press collects articles from reporters all over the world. I doubt those reporters submit articles royalty-free.

Really? I have never heard of a news reporter earning royalties. Reporters who want royalties write books.

Re:Copy and paste the article text you want to use

[PCM2]

Actually, I think virtually all book publishers only give money up front as an "advance against royalties." Often the figure is based on an estimate of how many copies will actually sell. If you write a computer book, for example, you'll probably never see much in the way of royalties beyond the original advance, because the publisher will be able to predict the market for your book and compensate you appropriately. I've heard of few instances where modern book publishers pay by the word. Magazine publishers, on the other hand, often do -- but then, the lengths of magazine articles are usually dictated by the magazine's editors.

Re:Copy and paste the article text you want to use

[JWSmythe]

    I was about to ask the same thing. I've seen plenty of famous quotes show up in AP stories. And, those are just the ones I've seen. AP sucks up and redistributes so many stories, it's virtually impossible for any individual to have read them all (except on the weekends, when it's all just recycled news).

    But, if the article is right, they're claiming that quote ran in the AP story AP sources: Military-civilian terror prison eyed. If you read the story, it clearly didn't. Or at least the quote has been withdrawn. I thought maybe it could have been words close together, but a few key words didn't show up, so that isn't the case either. So it's clearly not the story that they claimed.

    If you check through Google News, the only news site with the quote "if nature has made any one thing less susceptible" is Slashdot, but I'm sure this will start popping up all over the place. That pretty much, but not totally, eliminates recent stories. It's possible that it's in an AP story, that simply hasn't shown up anywhere. They sit on all kinds of stuff that'll never see the light of day.

    I'm pretty sure their tool is only weighing how big the quote is for a price tag. It's up to you to find it in an AP story and pay through their tool. I don't know why they cited an original article, if that wasn't really the article cited.

Re:Copy and paste the article text you want to use

[nurb432]

I bet at some point in their history they quoted this same passage of text, and this is what they guy wanted to use.

Re:Copy and paste the article text you want to use

[Anonymous Coward]

What if the Jefferson quote appear in an AP article? It's still public domain.

Re:Copy and paste the article text you want to use

[cpt kangarooski]

That's true. Jefferson's 1813 letter to Isaac McPherson concerned itself with inventions and patents, which had been an area of special interest to Jefferson as he was 1) an inventor; 2) Secretary of State during a period where he had responsibility for reviewing patent applications and issuing patents; 3) opposed to monopolies as a general rule.

However, it is widely recognized that Jefferson's argument, which is made at a very high level, is perfectly applicable to copyrights. After all, copyrights and patents are more closely related to one another than to, say, trademarks, or anything else, and at that high of a level, the underlying logic is basically the same.

HowToSaveAlotOfMoneyWithTheAP

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting, all you need todo is take all the spaces out of the paragraphs too and you save a fortune.
No, really, try it.

This is really, really, FSCKING stupid

[Theovon]

And I'm referring to the article and the guy who decided to do this "experiment."

(1) This software is designed for you to be able to license content licensable by AP. It assumes that the content you want to license was gotten from AP, because only people who want to license from AP will fill out the form to license text from AP. DUH.
(2) Technically, It may be prohibitive for them to write their software to sift through terabytes of text for every license request to ensure that the text you asked to license is (a) in there and (b) not licensed from someone else or public domain.
(3) It's fucking easy for anyone to guess that their software would behave this way.
(4) It's fucking unnecessary for it to be "smart" enough to second-guess stupid people who try to do this.
(5) Anyone knowingly trying to license from AP something not owned by AP is being a jerk.
(6) Anyone unknowingly trying to license from AP something not owned by AP is an idiot because they didn't do their homework.
(7) If you're a competent journalist, you'll know your rights, research the origin of content you want to quote, and attribute and license it appropriately. That's YOUR responsibility.

We all like a laugh at the expense of the **AA or the various media outlets. We are righteously outraged when they knowingly claim ownership of content that is not theirs. We are righteously outraged when they issue take-down notices for things that are obviously fair use.

But this is just fucking useless and stupid. I'm sorry. I'm pissed about this guy wasting our time with this, and some of you jackasses are swallowing it hook, line, and sinker. What pisses me off is that organizations like the AP are doing all kinds of things that REALLY ARE unfair, and yet some dick decides he's going to start picking on a non-issue. Now WE'RE the jackasses who are harrassing the AP. Two wrongs don't make a right.

I see nothing wrong with this service. I think it's perfectly sensible. The AP is just trying to save themselves and everyone else time and money by developing a convenient automated system for licensing content. Doing it this way saves on all sorts of legal, technical, and manpower costs. If they were to put in the effort to develop a system that would second-guess idiots who try to license content that's not actually under AP's control, it would cost ass-loads of money, and the service would be slow as shit. It wouldn't be worth the expense, so they'd shut it down and return to the old, expensive, manual way of doing things. You can argue about whether or not it's right for them to charge AT ALL for content. But that's a separate issue. Courts will uphold that they DO have a right to license at least SOME of their content, and this automated system is helping them keep volumes up and individual license fees down.

If you really want to catch the AP with their pants down, you'll have to find a situation (and I'm sure there are many) where the AP have explicitly (with a human involved) claimed ownership of content that wasn't theirs. In the case discussed in this article, I don't think it would stand up in any court that their automated system was being malicious, because the fact that they charged for a license doesn't necessarily imply ownership. Nowhere in any of this is any intent to defraud or deceive. The only way for you to be tricked by this system is to trick yourself.

Re:This is really, really, FSCKING stupid

[Theovon]

I spoke with my wife (who is an attorney) about this, and I may have been a bit hasty.

(1) It wasn't inappropriate for this guy to try this experiment, although the way he announced the result may have been a bit jerky.
(2) If the AP's web site is going to be "dumb" like this, they need a very prominent disclaimer that explains how dumb it is.
(3) If, in light of this discovery, the AP does not post an appropriate disclaimer, then they are clearly in the wrong, because then they would be KNOWINGLY selling licenses to content that they don't (necessarily) own.

Re:This is really, really, FSCKING stupid

[John Hasler]

But what does the "license" actually say? Are they guaranteeing that, having paid them, you now can use the material with impunity? Not likely. Much more likely they merely promise that they won't sue you. Since you provided the words for their software to count, I don't see how you could claim that they misled you into believing that they owned the copyright. It's entirely reasonable for them to assume that no one in his right mind is going to paste anything in there that they didn't get from a work labeled as AP property.

Re:Copy and paste the article text you want to use

[lannocc]

You you telling me they cannot validate the text against their OWN article database before "licensing" its usage?

It's more complicated than that. Not only would they need to search a database of article texts, their system would need semantic understanding of the text as well so that it knows, for example, not to charge for quoted speech in the article which the AP wouldn't own the rights to. I don't think the system is claiming to assert any rights.

The current system sounds to me like it's there as a basic protection / convenience for the end-user who wishes to use words from an AP article and: a) isn't clear on their fair-use rights; b) knows their use would be beyond fair-use and wishes to license the text; or c) wants to CYA regardless. In any case, should there be a future suit against the end-user and they used this sytem then it's easy to show that the AP authorized the use.

Re:Copy and paste the article text you want to use

[DriedClexler]

Rule #1: Never trust user input.

Taking a hint from xkcd, someone should try:

The data helped appease lawmakers such as Sen. Susan'); DROP TABLE Articles;--

(Oops, I just infringed copyright on this.)

Or not...

[Theaetetus]

No, it's not.

It's like Comcast charging you for another provider's cable.

No, and I think most denizens of Slashdot would understand this: it's like Comcast (or the AP) having a bug in their software. Is the lesson here that organizations should have clauses in their contracts that their programmers are liable for any and all injuries to the organization's reputation caused by bugs in their software? Frankly, I should hope not. But that sure is the way we're pushing.

Re:Or not...

[falconwolf]

It's like Comcast charging you for another provider's cable.

No, and I think most denizens of Slashdot would understand this: it's like Comcast (or the AP) having a bug in their software.

Yes, and I think most denizens of Slashdot would understand it's not a bug when something is compleatly left out, such as having software check whether the operator has the rights to sell a license. Furthermore it's not a bug when validation is left out of a program, it's poor programming. It would have been quite easy for the AP programmers to have the program test whether the quote was even in the article. Heck I've never worked as a programmer, or in any other high tech field, yet I know that.

Falcon

Re:Or not...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is Slashdot; can't you come up with a car analogy?

Re:Or not...

[shutdown -p now]

No, and I think most denizens of Slashdot would understand this: it's like Comcast (or the AP) having a bug in their software. Is the lesson here that organizations should have clauses in their contracts that their programmers are liable for any and all injuries to the organization's reputation caused by bugs in their software?

The lesson here is that you shouldn't make an automated system to license content, because you cannot make it reasonably fool-proof to ensure that it only issues licenses to something you have a right to license, and does not make false legal claims (including copyright claims).

Re:Or not...

[Theaetetus]

It's like Comcast charging you for another provider's cable.

No, and I think most denizens of Slashdot would understand this: it's like Comcast (or the AP) having a bug in their software.

Yes, and I think most denizens of Slashdot would understand it's not a bug when something is compleatly left out, such as having software check whether the operator has the rights to sell a license. Furthermore it's not a bug when validation is left out of a program, it's poor programming. It would have been quite easy for the AP programmers to have the program test whether the quote was even in the article. Heck I've never worked as a programmer, or in any other high tech field, yet I know that.

You've never worked as a programmer, yet you think it would be "quite easy" to have a database of the billions of AP articles that have ever been written (and growing at several thousand per day - AP is famous for their short news blurbs), and be able to search it for matching input from as few as four words, as the article used?

I suppose it would be quite easy if you do it with several hundred servers and a distributed searching engine... but it would also be prohibitively expensive.

i smell a lawsuit!

[markringen]

i smell a lawsuit! yeah sorry lawyers but you guys smell so cheaply, that i can smell u on the other side of the planet.

This isn't really a story

[Anonymous Coward]

I think this is really a non-story.

I certainly understand the complaint or criticism that AP shouldn't being making money by licensing something that they have no right to license. And, at first glance, it might seem as though AP is relying on software that hasn't been properly tested.

But I really can't ignore the fact that James Grimmelmann just purposely misused their software. Think about it: if you are asked to write a program like this, are you really going to think "Hm, what if people try to get a license from AP that AP doesn't deserve? What if users try to get a license for words that aren't even in the article they are quoting?". I think it would have been a fair assumption by the people who wrote the program to think that people who willingly use the program would themselves check if the words they are trying to license from AP actually belong to AP or are actually in the article that they are quoting.

I mean, who is really going to go through this application process and give AP money for something that AP doesnt deserve? Other than publicity-seeking bloggers, of course.

I certainly know that AP has a messed up stance on IP and I really disagree with a lot of things they do. But I don't see them at fault in this case. They refunded his money. And I didn't even get the impression that he had to beg them to do so.

I think this is really a non-story because Mr. Grimmelmann wasn't forced to use this program. Now, when AP sues somebody for NOT using this program they have, then that will be a story. Until then, it's just another blogger trying to drum up traffic.

Re:Copy and paste the article text you want to use

[Mendoksou]

I must have misunderstood. It was my impression that "(randomly chosen) article" meant that a reference was provided by the user, thus the service need only search the one article for the text. That wouldn't be too computationally heavy, unless they are getting several such requests a second (which I doubt... but I suppose it's possible).

Better Analogy and Why their system ain't broken

[theblondebrunette]

Your analogy is wrong.
It's like walking inside a dollar store, and bringing them a pen or a small toy that the dollar store doesn't really sell.. However, since the price is known to be $1 per item, they'd sell it to you.

The AP's store has a price-list based on words.. If you want to license a given set of words that you found in an article of theirs, you can easily pay up.
Their system is there to make money for them, not to tell you if a given sequence of words belongs to them.

Whether 5 words rule is fair to copyright is a different story.

Re:Copy and paste the article text you want to use

[TubeSteak]

They don't need a database of every article published.

They need a database if they don't want this to continue happening.
Unless they actually verify the validity of the license requests, they're going to have to continuously deal with refunds
(this irritates banks) or they're going to deny refunds and get sued.

However, there is nothing inherently wrong with the service,

Considering what just happened, I'd have to say that the service was poorly implemented.
Or is licensing public domain material not something "inherently wrong" with the service?

Their poor implementation aside, this is going to be used as a club to beat people who would otherwise claim fair use.
Would you rather pay $[license cost] or get sued by the AP?

The AP's plan will only work if everyone goes along with it.
Otherwise they have to enforce their copyright the old fashioned way: with their own manpower.

Hmmmmm

[Copperfield]

Is it 5 words in a row or do I get charged for any 5 words I pull from the article? If so I would like to grab words "a, the, it, the, and" so I don't end up having to pay someone else even more.

Re:Hmmmmm

[skeeto]

I have written every possible permutation of 26 or fewer consecutive words and compressed them into these 242 bytes. Run it through a perl interpreter to decompress (note: it takes a few thousand billion years to decompress).

my $words = '/usr/share/dict/words';
local $, = ' ';
sub words {
my ($num, @stack) = @_;
open my($fd), $words;
while (<$fd>) {
print @stack, $_ and chomp;
words($num - 1, @stack, $_) if $num > 1;
}
}
words(26);

I hereby release all phrases 26 words and under into the public domain. Problem solved!

charging people for bottled water

[falconwolf]

What I find amazing is that people will pay for bottled water, even though a lot of it comes from the water tap. A couple of years ago Consumer Digest tested bottled water from different companies, and some of it was worse than city water. I buy filtered water but I'd rather have a filter attached to my faucet.

Falcon

Re:charging people for bottled water

[sumdumass]

A lot of people pay for the convenience and adaptability when they buy bottled water. It's sort of like the difference between shelling out $50 to take the family to the movies 4 times a month verses paying $50 extra a month to have the pay channels that will have the movied in a few months anyways.

If your at the beach, it's convenient to have a sealed bottle of clean water to drink. Sometimes, your tap water doesn't taste as well either. I have a friend who attempted to fill his swimming pool up with well water and ended up dropping the water table so low that his septic discharge polluted the well. He had to bleach the well a few times, put whole house filters in place and a chlorinated treatment thing on line before the health department would sign off on the new well he had drilled. He still buys bottled water despite assurances from every water test he has had done on it since then passing.

I personally use a whole house filter (which surprisingly was only about $30 plus replacement filters from lows) and the same as a line filter for hot and cold under the sink. The filters for the kitchen sink are supposed to be replace ever 6 months but I look at the color of them before replacing and sometimes extend the time. The house filter gets replaced every 3 months at around $15 for a four pack. The only difference is a little loss in line pressure at the spigots and the water actually tastes better. I have toyed with buying a pressure booster but haven't quite found a need for it yet.

Even with that, I have no problem buying water when it is convenient.

Re:charging people for bottled water

[falconwolf]

A lot of people pay for the convenience and adaptability when they buy bottled water.

Like I said I buy filtered water, I have a 5 gallon bottle I fill up. I also have and use a Camelbak I take with me everywhere, and it's very adaptable. Even if you refill an empty bottle you're still saving money and it's no less convenient.

I personally use a whole house filter

Yea, I'd rather have a whole house filter myself. For now though I rent an apartment.

Falcon

Re:charging people for bottled water

[evilviper]

What I find amazing is that people will pay for bottled water

I highly object to paying for bottled water for numerous reasons... The disgusting taste of plastic leeching into the water, the tiny amount of value provided for an exorbitant price, the gross inconvenience, etc. but I don't claim there's NO REASON to buy bottled water.

even though a lot of it comes from the water tap.

Yes it does. But THEN it goes through massive processing... industrial-strength filtration, and processes to add and remove, eg. minerals as required to alter the taste.

Certainly, where I lived before, tap water run through a simple carbon filter (to eliminate the now-pervasive chlorine taste found in tap water) tasted far better than bottled water. Moving to a new area, even after filtration, city water tastes horrible... I don't know if it's the high concentration of minerals ("hard" water), lack of oxygenation, et al., but it's undeniably lousy for drinking.

A couple of years ago Consumer Digest tested bottled water from different companies, and some of it was worse than city water.

No, it wasn't. The media is infatuated with scaring people, so they report without any context.

All they found was a higher bacteria count in bottled water... By that same metric, tap water is "worse" than drinking bleach... And that IS the primary difference. Heavily chlorinated water kills EVERYTHING, but most people wouldn't agree that it's BETTER for you.

Furthermore, the idea that bacteria is BAD is a long pervasive myth that has caused substantial harm to mankind, and which scientists continually try to break people of... People raised where they were exposed to more bacteria generally become much healthier over their lifetime than those in a largely sterile environment.

Re:charging people for bottled water

[falconwolf]

even though a lot of it comes from the water tap.

Yes it does. But THEN it goes through massive processing...

Not according to National Resource Defense Council.

A couple of years ago Consumer Digest tested bottled water from different companies, and some of it was worse than city water.

All they found was a higher bacteria count in bottled water...

The NRDC found more than just that, they found:
"Contaminates of synthetic organic chemicals, bacteria, and arsenic were found to exceed the allowable limits under both state and water industry standards."

If you have evidence they are wrong produce it.

Furthermore, the idea that bacteria is BAD is a long pervasive myth that has caused substantial harm to mankind, and which scientists continually try to break people of...

Well, there's something we agree on. I believe too many people have gone overboard trying to disinfect everyday things with antibiotics, anti-microbes, and antiseptics. However it's scientists, or their employers, who push for these things. I never heard or saw people demanding these products but I see ads for them.

Falcon

Re:charging people for bottled water

[dublindan]

Yes, some bottled water IS just tap water, but I tell you, I can taste the difference. You can tell the difference in price usually too (0.40 per 2L bottle vs 1.xx per bottle, though obviously its not fool proof).

My friends used to laugh at me for buying bottled water, but heres the thing: I DO taste the difference and buy bottled water over tap water BECAUSE of the TASTE, not because I think its cleaner or anything. I grew up in the country and when I was young, our tap water came from a stream on the hill behind the house. It was clean and uncontaminated and you could instantly taste the difference. Most people don't believe that water can taste different, but try it sometime - find pure, fresh, clean mountain water and tell me theres no difference.
I used to hate tap water in towns and hated bottled water because it just doesn't taste the same as fresh mountain water. (For years, I'd only drink sparkling bottled water, because it masked the taste of the water a bit). Then I moved to the City and suddenly bottled water was much nicer than the tap water and I adapted. Yes, its still horrible compared to the fresh mountain water (which has since been cut off, because some idiot let their farm animals into the stream and it got contaminated :'( so now even that water is connected to mains water - though being in the country, its still better than my own tap water), but its a whole lot better than city tap water.


So, I buy bottled water for the taste. I immediately taste if the water is not nice (and assume its bottled tap water) and won't buy that brand again. Theres really only 3 or 4 brands I buy regularly now.
There was no real point to this post :-D

Re:charging people for bottled water

[SQLGuru]

Just because it comes from the tap doesn't mean it comes from your city's tap. Tap water tastes different based on how it's treated. New Orleans tap water is horrible (or was 10 years ago when I lived there). Buying bottled tap water that came from somewhere else was bound to taste better.

Re:charging people for bottled water

[MikeBabcock]

I purchase jugs of spring water because I like the taste. I pay $2.50 for a large (25L) container when refilling it myself from the depot. There's a free spring near where I work as well which a lot of people pull over to fill from, but I'd have to get the water tested myself before using it.

Re:charging people for bottled water

[evilviper]

The NRDC found more than just that, they found:
"Contaminates of synthetic organic chemicals, bacteria, and arsenic were found to exceed the allowable limits under both state and water industry standards."

The link you've provided doesn't expand on what "synthetic organic chemicals" they found, so I can't possibly argue with that. They could just as well be inert, as not.

We've already discussed bacteria...

Arsenic is the only "problem" listed, and that's an interesting case. It's only recently that the US substantially increased the restrictions on arsenic. Now, many natural sources of water have arsenic levels that are too high to qualify. Surely, water bottlers aren't intentionally ADDING arsenic to their "tap water". It's the non-tap water sources (natural springs) which you've stated a preference for, which is, in fact, the "unhealthy" water, according to that report.

Additionally, arsenic is a special case, in that it takes a lifetime of drinking water with arsenic levels in excess of that allowed in tap water, to potentially cause any minor health consequences.

Re:charging people for bottled water

[falconwolf]

I grew up in the country and when I was young, our tap water came from a stream on the hill behind the house. It was clean and uncontaminated and you could instantly taste the difference. Most people don't believe that water can taste different, but try it sometime - find pure, fresh, clean mountain water and tell me theres no difference.

I don't need to try, I practically grew up in the woods. I can't do it now, damaged memory, but I could have been dropped off in the middle of the woods of Florida and survived off the land. I knew how to find water, what plants or parts of plants were edible, and how to trap animals. I fished, in fresh and salt water. And I hunted. With rifles and bow and arrow. And I cleaned what I killed. I also know water because I grew up swimming and scuba diving.

However a lot of the bottled water in stores does not go directly from springs or streams, as In said before some of those bottles of water come from the water systems of the localities where it's bottled, the tap. Now even if the water is purified before being bottled it's still cheaper, easier, and less wasteful to buy large bottles of water. I have a 5 gallon water bottle I filled up earlier today, for less than $2. If I want minerals in it I can buy mineral packs.

There was no real point to this post :-D

Wrong bigtime!!! The point was that bottled water may be no better than city tap water, and that is in fact what some of the bottled water is, bottled water from the city or county. And if you're concerned about what you're drinking then filtering water yourself is the cleanest, most convenient, easiest, and cheapest way to have pure water. Your smart aleck response had no real point, other than as a troll.

Falcon

Re:charging people for bottled water

[falconwolf]

Just because it comes from the tap doesn't mean it comes from your city's tap. Tap water tastes different based on how it's treated.

If you want clean or purified water you're wasting money and resources by buying 1 liter bottles. Either get a 5 gallon refillable bottle or better get a water filter and filter it yourself.

Falcon

Re:charging people for bottled water

[falconwolf]

I purchase jugs of spring water because I like the taste. I pay $2.50 for a large (25L) container when refilling it myself from the depot.

That's better than buying water in 1 liter use once bottles. I can go into many different stores and see row after row of water in 1 liter, and smaller, disposable bottles. Heck, I early today I refilled my 5 gallon refillable water bottle, and I paid less than $1. However I'd prefer to have a Whole-House Water Filter. That or a spring with good water near my home, actually I'd prefer the spring then if needed would use the filter.

Falcon

Re:charging people for bottled water

[dublindan]

Errrrm, thats what I meant: theres no point to MY post (by this I meant mine).

AP

[falconwolf]

the coverage of local issues and politics is sadly lacking.

The AP only covers local issues, politics, or news rarely. Local news is supposed to cover local stuff.

Falcon

$699

[Nick Driver]

There's a market for meaningless licenses

Hmmm..... now where have I heard that before?

License this!

[Profane MuthaFucka]

Aug 3, 9:36 PM EDT

Car buyers returned to American showrooms in July

By KEN THOMAS and TOM KRISHER
AP Business Writers
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DETROIT (AP) -- The government's "cash-for-clunkers" program drew car and truck buyers back to American showrooms last month, making July the best month for auto sales in nearly a year and offering powerful evidence that the rebates were working as senators debate whether to continue them.

In fact, some automakers, dealers and government officials declared an end to the industry slump that nearly claimed the lives of General Motors and Chrysler.

"We certainly expect that we've seen the worst of it," said Dave Zuchowski, Hyundai Motor Co.'s vice president of U.S. sales, whose sales rose 12 percent over July of last year, the second-best in the industry, behind only Suzuki.

"We're not saying it's going to be a high bounce back. We think it will be good, solid, steady growth."

Even though the overall U.S. market fell 12 percent when compared with July of last year, gleeful automakers reported vastly better sales than in the dismal first half of 2009.

In Washington, the White House urged the Senate to approve $2 billion without delay or risk ending the big rebates for car buyers by week's end.

Buyer demand was so strong that the government had nearly spent in one week the $1 billion that Congress had expected to last until Nov. 1.

"I think probably this is the greatest one-week energy conservation program that may have come out of Washington or anywhere else," said George Pipas, Ford's top sales analyst.

Without the clunkers program, July sales probably would have been about the same as June, Pipas said.

Democrats remained concerned about lining up enough support for the incentives, which offer up to $4,500 per vehicle. The House approved the rebates last week before heading home for the August recess.

Automakers and the Obama administration said the clunkers program did everything it was designed to do - replace inefficient sport utility vehicles with more efficient cars, boost auto sales and help lead the economy out of recession.

Gas-guzzling vehicles from the 1990s were stacked up on nearly every new car lot in America. As of Saturday, the government reported that 83 percent of the trade-ins under the clunker program were trucks, and 60 percent of the vehicles purchased were cars.

July was the best sales month since August 2008, when the industry sold more than 1.2 million vehicles before the financial meltdown began.

Still, the sudden spike in sales depleted dealer stocks of nearly every major automaker, leading many observers to predict that prices will almost certainly climb later this year.

The Ford Focus, which gets 35 mpg on the highway, was the No. 1 purchase of those trading in clunkers.

While the cash-for-clunkers program surely drew out buyers who would have come later in the year, Zuchowski and others said much of the clunker sales were from pent-up

Re:License this!

[Profane MuthaFucka]

Flamebait? Jesus obviously fucked that moderator in the ass.

Think about it - Jesus was a man. Jesus had a COCK! An actual cock!

Hard to believe, and most never even think about it, but he had a cock.

And the moderator was fucked in the head with it.

How are they SUPPOSED to license it?

[TiggertheMad]

This is just like when you get up an go to the zoo, and buy an ice cream cone with vanilla and strawberry ice cream, and you go into the penguin house and when you are in there a polar bear breaks out if its cage and you are trapped in the penguin house with you ice cream cone, and you notice that Natalie Portman is sitting next to to you covered in hot grits, and then, like, the polar bear breaks down the door and as he comes in...

Wait a second. Its NOTHING like that.

Its more like the AP hired some developer to write a tool license out its twenty three kajillion words of content automatically and told them they wanted it done by Tuesday. Do you really expect someone to write code that would contextually differentiate public IP content from private on the fly? Really?

While we are wishing for silly shit, I wish I was really the one in the penguin house in the story with my best grits spoon.

Re:How are they SUPPOSED to license it?

[jesset77]

Do you really expect someone to write code that would contextually differentiate public IP content from private on the fly? Really?

No, but I had rather hoped that before selling me a licence to content, AP's software would at least check to see if the text I was after belonged to them or not. TFA discusses public content, simply because that by definition cannot belong to AP. AP has all of their content digitized (how else would they know what to sue over?) so the matter of checking my request against that content is covered by this groundbreaking algorithm .

Rule #1 of laying property claims: mark off your god damned property. If you can't be bothered to tell where your property ends, then it's not really yours to begin with.

Re:How are they SUPPOSED to license it?

[operagost]

A polar bear is on the loose? Natalie must be positively petrified.

Re:How are they SUPPOSED to license it?

[Ced_Ex]

It's a pretty difficult task as any AP article could be quoting something that they don't own, and therefore is now included within copyright protection. They would have to flag individual paragraphs and sentences throughout an article to ensure they licence exactly what they own, and not sources they simply quoted from elsewhere.

Re:How are they SUPPOSED to license it?

[jesset77]

It's a pretty difficult task as any AP article could be quoting something that they don't own, and therefore is now included within copyright protection. They would have to flag individual paragraphs and sentences throughout an article to ensure they licence exactly what they own, and not sources they simply quoted from elsewhere.

That is precisely the reason they need to confirm the quoted content is theirs. If I wish to cite an NYT article copied from AP's feed, it is entirely possible (though a lot to expect from NYT) that the journalist did some investigation of his own and added copy. That might be the bit I am trying to cite. If so, AP has no power to protect my from NYT should they file claim against me.

However, since NYT got the article from AP, it is a cake walk for AP to simply check my words against their own raw feed.

The only reason they do not do this — and instead simply take your money and thereafter forget who you are — is because it takes a modest amount of effort, and you would have to explain the complex realities of copyright to people who are too busy to care and only wish there to be a slot to feed money into to feel as though they have covered their own arses.

Essentially, it is the same scam SCO was pulling: frighten middle managers who were locked into Linux into paying SCO unnecessary sums of cash.

Excellent!

[The_mad_linguist]

Now I have a license to publish the complete Harry Potter series online. A bargain at only $100!

Re:Copy and paste the article text you want to use

[falconwolf]

I have never heard of a news reporter earning royalties.

You're right but reporters can sell use rights. News organizations typically pay for first tyme usage but selling online as AP is doing is a violation of that. AP even created a registry "with a built-in rights framework that will provide AP and other content owners with tools that allow news organizations to grant and monitor specific usage rights associated with each piece of content."

Falcon

Re:Copy and paste the article text you want to use

[SatanicPuppy]

Actually, they do. In fact, they pay to submit those articles.

The reporters are paid by member newspapers, who submit their articles (if they're deemed noteworthy) for the AP to distribute. The AP can then do whatever the hell they want to with them. A good portion of the time some overworked schmuck at the AP office goes through and rips out all the local quotes, and locally relevant text (so as to make it more applicable across the country) and, having changed the story more than, say, 20%, they pull the original reporters byline off of it, thus producing a story that was written by Mr. Associated Press.

The newspapers and reporters don't care because their paper gets to use this article however THEY see fit, adding in their own local color and whatever, and then (if they've added enough) replacing the AP byline with their own byline and adding "from the ap", or "ap contributing", or whatever, to the bottom of the article.

The problem is that, now, everyone and their mother is reprinting this stuff without putting any money or original content back in the system. So they're pissed off, and charging the freeloaders a fee.

Re:Copy and paste the article text you want to use

[SatanicPuppy]

That is actually not true except in rare cases where a reporter is working directly for the AP, but without actually WORKING for the AP.

The AP is made up of thousands of news organizations who all pay people to create news content. They then give that content to the AP, and the AP gives them other peoples content in return. There is no licensing. The reporter sure as hell doesn't see any royalties! They get an hourly wage or a lump sum, and neither of these is substantial.

A(c) b(c)e(c)t(c)t(c)e(c)r(c) i(c)d(c)e(c)a(c).(c)

[NicknamesAreStupid]

e(c)h(c)!(c) *(c) *(c) (, c, a(c)n(c)d(c) )(c) a(c)r(c)e(c) a(c)l(c)s(c)o(c) c(c)o(c)p(c)y(c)r(c)i(c)g(c)h(c)t(c)e(c)d(c).(c)

Re:Copy and paste the article text you want to use

[SatanicPuppy]

I don't know how else you think they're planning on enforcing it? Basically its: pay us to use our IP, or, if we catch you, we'll sue you.

That's how all copyright law works.

Re:Copy and paste the article text you want to use

[Liquidrage]

Except for a bunch of virgins whining on the interwebs, why does the service need to be changed? Who was harmed? What law was broken? Someone misused the service on purpose, wasted 12 USD on a worthless license, and then got the money back.

Holy fucking wow!

Let me know when someone actually pays the AP for a license, only the words are not under copyright by the AP, that someone then uses those words, and gets sued, and he tries to pull the "AP gave me a license" card. That would be interesting. If only to watch the entire legal system laugh at them. No one in their right mind believes the AP actually granted him a license for words he doesn't own. The AP has a service that grants rights for stuff they do own. The service was misused, ON PURPOSE, and the result was a worthless piece of paper. And a bunch of pissed of virgins.

solution.

[warrior241]

Easy way to fix this, have the word counter also require that a url to the article being quoted be entered. then it can just check against that article in the database and viola, they have a system that is now not playing in the most retarded of fair use grounds.

Devil's Advocate

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm playing a little devil's advocate here but I'll say it anyways. The just wrote a program that would require no maintenance. They didn't think that someone would try and buy a copyright to words they didn't own. Basically they assumed that their users would be smart. Which admittedly is a dumb mistake, but a mistake non the less.

So now they are going to have to hire a staff to maintain the software and actually check to see if they own the words, which means they will up the cost to buy the copyright. Thanks stupid people.

Re:Copy and paste the article text you want to use

[falconwolf]

The Associated Press collects articles from reporters all over the world. I doubt those reporters submit articles royalty-free. How does the AP tie licensed text back to the article it applies to?

The AP set up a news registry that should be able to do that. There's no reason they can't tie the system selling licenses to the registry. If the quote to be licensed isn't in the registry then they don't own the rights. If the quote is a word for word quote someone made that others could quote then it could be meta-tagged.

Words?

[blackraven14250]

Ok, so how many people realize that there's only so many words and so many ways to combine them? When it comes to writing a Master's thesis, nobody's going to come up with the same exact thing, word for word. But for a small snippet of text 26 words long, it's bound to come up again sometime without hearing it in advance. Especially when it's an observation about the outside world. The point is, nobody should be charging for licenses for snippets of text. When you create an entire other world in a trilogy of books, that's one thing. When you write an article with a max of 1000 words, that's just silly.

my forecast

[purpleraison]

All the news outlets will attempt to sell their news online while 'paper news' begins to lag. The online generation will become less informed about the truths of current events, and ultimately 'grass-roots' organizations will begin to distribute 'newspapers' to enlighten the masses... ...talk about going back a couple-hundred years, except replace 'online' with 'town cryer'... seriously, capitalism may be a setback for the online community, but I really hope valid news is still available for free - or else we are all screwed.

They need a database of every AP article ever

[falconwolf]

published.

Problem solved.

Then they can either hash the pasted text & try to find the source or they can require you to provide a citation.

My browser goes a pretty good job of searching text.

Either way, you don't want to do that client-side with javascript.

Agreed. But it should be simple to tie the licensing application to the registry. It may take a while to search through it, though search engines don't have a problem doing it, then if nothing else a license proposal can be emailed.

The answer to the first question in the FAQ linked to above, says it:
"A: Original news content such as that produced by AP and its members increasingly is being used across the Web without appropriate permission or compensation, and the problem is rapidly spreading to other digital applications. A content registry is a fundamental and powerful means to protect valuable and costly news content to assure that news organizations like AP can continue to support original journalism."

Falcon

So uh

[mysidia]

I wonder what happens if someone licenses a "quote" deriding the AP.. and then publishes it with fine print (Above text re-printed under license with the Associated Press)

Doesn't licensing some text for publication imply some sort of explicit approval of publication of the specific item?

Although (I suppose) it's possible their system isn't that braindead, and actually does have some sort of human review.

Circle(jerk) irony...

[shacky003]

I wonder if the AP will pick up on this story?

Re: Outright False

[TaoPhoenix]

Go further.

Isn't applying your own copyright notice to something that's copyright by someone else ... STEALING it?? (Notice the beautiful difference from just "duplicating/making available etc".)

See, as long as those insane copyright rulings are going on, all analogies to cars, potato chips, contractors, etc miss the point.

Re: Instructions

[TaoPhoenix]

All these ad hominem comments here are declaring $0 penalties for copyright violations in variants of the Chewbacca defense.

Prosecution: "Your honor, AP falsely took my copyright and added their own notice to it."
Defense for AP: "Don't have to pay. Submitter was a dumba$$."
Judge: "Rule for Defense. No damages incurred."

It's not nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

...it's "feelgood".
I worked for a major bank as a freelancer on my own account writing software.
The software became popular in-house, and required to be "supported".
So the bank paid me an extra 10% on a separate invoice to provide "support"
on a product I was still writing, and employed to work on 100% anyway.
They got theoretically "nothing" for the 10% surcharge, but in fact purchased
their "due diligence" requirements to ensure the product was "supported".
You can call it "idiotic" all you like, but you're a fool.
I figure you probably purchase insurance of one flavour or another, and
throughout your entire lifetime, you will receive "nothing" tangible.
Such insurance now doesn't even bother sending you a copy of the contract,
as all you need to do is prove payment - through an invoice.

The paperwork that you spat upon - that IS the product.

paying

[falconwolf]

the premise that the copyright owner should be able to charge on a per-word basis (especially in text made up largely of quotations from other sources, as most AP articles are) is truly preposterous.

Some copyright writers, owners, are paid by the number of words. That's how news and periodicals pay. Check out some guides for magazine writers.

Falcon

Democrats, Libertarians, and Republicans

[falconwolf]

Libertarian and republican politics is based on the idea that government interference has a net benefit in limited cases.

Libertarians yes, Republicans no. The only difference between Republicans and Democrats is what part of government is big. Republicans want big law enforcement and military whereas Democrats what big social programs. Since at least Eisenhower every Republican president has expanded government.

And now Obama is going to make it even bigger.

Falcon

Re:Copy and paste the article text you want to use

[Anonymous Coward]

And a bunch of pissed of virgins.

Ah yes, a childish attempt to distract.

Fact is, and not the fiction you spouted, is that AP represented public domain text as their own and tried to charge for it. Complete with legal boilerplate.

AP might have a legal out if they put some condition on the website that says only AP copyright text should be submitted, and words the boilerplate conditional on it being AP copyright text, but until then you're talking nonsense.

Your program would provide no benefit

[falconwolf]

because no court would believe that anyone would paw through the quadrillion pages of output your program would produce.

I think that was GP's point. Never mind going through a quadrillion pages, going through all of AP's stuff is stupid as well. Now as far as TFA is concerned, the problem is is AP is claiming rights to something they don't own the rights to.

Falcon

At least using "free as in beer"

[falconwolf]

stays free as in beer.

I don't understand why people, especially on Slashdot, use "free as in beer". Beer is not free. Speech on the other hand is free. I exercise free speech a lot, however though I've brewed my own homebrew beer it's not free. The closest I've heard of beer being free is when someone offers beer if someone else does something for them. "Help me clean out the garage and I'll give you a free beer."

Falcon

Re:At least using "free as in beer"

[T Murphy]

Sorry if I'm missing sarcasm, but there are two kinds of free: free as in no cost (free as in beer), and free as in freedom (free as in speech). Yes, speech doesn't cost you anything, but "free as in speech" refers to the freedom to say what you will. Saying "free as in beer" to specify free as in no cost is both to clarify from free as in speech and it is a joke since we all want free beer but never expect there to be any.

Re:At least using "free as in beer"

[falconwolf]

there are two kinds of free: free as in no cost (free as in beer)

As I said in the post you replied to, beer is not free. Even if you brew it yourself, which I've done, it's not free. Brewing beer yourself can actually be more expensive than buying it in a store.

Falcon

Re:At least using "free as in beer"

[T Murphy]

it is a joke since we all want free beer but never expect there to be any

I don't know if you're being sarcastic or if you're taking it too seriously- no one means there is such a thing as free beer. There is no such thing as true freedom for all practical purposes but the concept is accepted to allow useful conversation. Same idea here but with a tongue-in-cheek addition. You can nitpick in some conversations but for the most part when the phrases free speech/free beer are used you'll have to take them for their intended meaning or you'll be just like the grammar nazis that miss out on the insight in the post because of a split infinitive. I don't disagree with your point but you seem to miss the big picture.

Sorry to drag this out but if you make this argument every time the phrase is used on this site you'll have time for little else.

Re:At least using "free as in beer"

[falconwolf]

You can nitpick in some conversations but for the most part when the phrases free speech/free beer are used you'll have to take them for their intended meaning

You still don't understand. Sure "free as in speech" means people have to right to speak, but I don't know what "free as in beer" means. In no way, shape, or form is beer free. Some think it's a right. But I wouldn't say it's anymore a right than soda or tea is a right.

Falcon

Unlimited Windows Source License for $100?

[spaceturtle]

Everyone is so paranoid about the AP. I am sure they have ensured that they have rights to distribute the content.

Anyone one tried pasting in the leaked Windows source code? According to their pricing scheme its $100 for a "For profit" license to post the code on a webpage. Maybe a little overpriced, but at least it's less than the cost for a single use binary at my local store.

Re: Outright False

[shutdown -p now]

Isn't applying your own copyright notice to something that's copyright by someone else ... STEALING it??

No, it's not - it's plagiarism. As distinct from copyright infringement, which is in turn distinct from property theft.

Re:Copy and paste the article text you want to use

[JasterBobaMereel]

So in other words by the time I read it in my local paper, three people have been already paid to write the one article..... and the copyright of the original author is missing .... yes they respect copyright don't they ....

Here's $12 dollars for permission I don't need.

[91degrees]

It's an automated system to grant permission to people who need it. It's not up to the system to make this determination. It's up to the person.

Hey, I can buy 100 licences to Windows Vista and then install Linux if I like. I can buy a hunting licence so I can put down mousetraps. I can take a driving test before getting on a segway. I don't need to but it's up to me to realise that.

Bad summary

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm. My take on the facts (IAAL) is that the AP offered to pay the guy $12 for them not to sue him for any copyright infringment they might otherwise sue him for, on the basis of the use of those words.

On my reading, any judge would say that he got exactly what he paid for.

The fact it was worthless was not due to any mispreresentation on their part.

Re:Copy and paste the article text you want to use

[Serious Callers Only]

So they're pissed off, and charging the freeloaders a fee.

You mean they're pissed off, and trying to charge the freeloaders a fee - soon enough, they'll discover that the freeloaders have no interest in paying a fee (they are freeloaders after all), don't have the money anyway.

Worse than that, no-one has no real need of the AP service, such as it is, because the internet is much better at distributing information than the AP is. Nobody needs AP any more, they don't add anything to the data they process; in many ways they bastardise it, and adding DRM flags to content isn't going to make that essential problem go away.

If a newspaper, or even a journalist, wants to automate feeds of their stories or even sell feeds of their info to others, they can do that over the internet with very little fuss, and vice versa (RSS). People already do this, without the AP taking their cut, and they simply don't need any broken-by-design licensing system from AP.

Re:Copy and paste the article text you want to use

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe someday people will understand how hashes work. You cant hash an except from an article and compare it to hashes of full articles.

Re:Copy and paste the article text you want to use

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, let's say he decides to take a quote from this article

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2008-11-05-rice-obama_N.htm

say this section of text: ""We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union"

That's quoted directly from the text, and I'm guessing the AP doesn't own the copyright to those words. I'm sure there are other instances as well where their articles include text that they don't own the rights to... possibly even text that someone else owns the rights to. The point of the article is that AP is not checking the text to see if it can license the rights, it's just licensing whatever you type in the box, regardless of the content. I can't imagine that's legal.

Monty Python

[daybot]

Does this story remind anyone of this Monty Python sketch?

But AP *has* done something wrong here!

[jonaskoelker]

They just didn't make sure that they owned the rights before selling a license to someone who came to them to SPECIFICALLY buy a license from someone he damn well KNEW didn't own it. AP has done nothing wrong here.

Well, if their software made sure he already knew AP didn't own the quote, I agree. Please show me the mind-reading code and I'll shut up.

Otherwise, what could have happened is that someone by accident pays AP for a license to use something which AP doesn't own; or even worse, that AP issues an illegal license offer. As someone has already suggested, buy a license to RIAA lyrics from AP; go tell on AP to the RIAA; watch RIAA and AP duke it out in the two-men-enter-one-man-leaves arena.

What AP has done wrong (unless their code can read minds) is enable something very wrong.

Selling quotes

[fgouget]

So in the test case the quote was in the public domain. But AP presumably often quotes people ('Just before disappearing the president made this strange declaration: "Thank you all for your support and for all the fish"'), very likely without even asking for their permission. That's fine; it's what fair use is for.

Then you can buy the right to reproduce the whole article. Again that's fine (mostly, see below).

But if you select just the (11) words from the quote, their software should not sell you a license to these words since they don't own the copyright on it. This means they'll have to tag every quote so that their software knows not to sell licenses on them (or they need to build automatic quote recognition). Ouch.

So if you buy the whole article, do you pay by the word? If so, should the quoted words be included? Probably not.

AP HAVE claimed copyright over it

[Anonymous Coward]

by demanding that you attribute copyright and all rights reserved to AP when licensing the public domain text.

Or is it OK if I take someone's text (say, an AP copyrighted text) and put

(c) Anon Coward, 2009. All Rights Reserved

?

It wouldn't be nearly as hard as you imagine.

[Xenographic]

> I mean, there's only, what, twelve of them, right? That database shouldn't take long to search through every single time someone clicks "submit"...

Umm, aside from the fact that you have to supply them with a hyperlink to it (so that they can find their own page...), it really doesn't take that long to search a well-designed database.

I mean, you realize that Google searches through way more data than they ever had and that it does it in a fraction of a second, right? They COULD just search the *one* web page linked to by the user, make sure it's their own site (they don't own that many domains), then find the text, right?

Don't make it a harder problem than it actually is.

Re:Copy and paste the article text you want to use

[Anonymous Coward]

This whole AJAX thing has passed you by, hasn't it?

gross

[Anonymous Coward]

Only a moron could deny that the AP is Democrat-party run. You guys are flaming, pink-panty liberals.
Which means... ...ew... ...you're eating your own dead! Gross!

Re:Copy and paste the article text you want to use

[Anonymous Coward]

A four word phrase could easily appear in more than one article. This is particularly likely with a notable quote that several reporters included in their articles. For example, when a politician says something in front of a dozen different reporters five of them may include the quote in their articles.

Re:Copy and paste the article text you want to use

[Liquidrage]

No they didn't. That is not fact.

There is a website called iCopyright. On it you can find stories from the AP. Only have you have located an AP story do you get an option to obtain permission to use text from the story. You can then paste in the text and it does a simple word count and gives you a total. The "license" actually states the words you copy/pasted and that they came from the article.

In this case, this person found an AP article, went to obtain permission to use text from it, and then purposefully submitted text that was not from the article.

The license he obtained was worthless. No one would sue the AP over granting it, it even says on the license text+article. That text wasn't in the article.

Again, the AP did not seek this person out. This person purposefully misused a website and obtained a worthless license. No laws were broken. No copyright violated. Nothing. It's a stupid story and it's sad you need it explained to you instead of doing a little bit of thinking on your own.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Copy and paste the article text you want to use

[Man Eating Duck]

What if Jefferson's quote had been used in the article?

Then you and I are free to use regardless of what AP thinks :)

Incidentally I work at a publishing house, and where we operate it's legal to use fairly extensive quotes under "Fair Use"-laws. Other things like for instance excerpts from sheet music can often be legally quoted. It depends on context, of course attribution is necessary, you can't pass it off as your own creation.

The five word limit is ridiculous anyway, it's probably extremely difficult to write a medium-length non-absurd article which contains no five word phrases also found in one of APs articles.

Re:Copy and paste the article text you want to use

[SatanicPuppy]

What copyright? If I pay you to write me some news copy, and you do it, do you think you can turn around and claim rights over that? I paid you to create it, it belongs to me.

If you write code for a company, who owns the code? If an actor acts in a movie, who owns the movie? This should not be news to you.

In this case, the newspaper owns the copyright, and they share that copyrighted information with the AP as per their contract.

Re:Copy and paste the article text you want to use

[SatanicPuppy]

Yea, yea, all the bloggers are going to fill the massive hole left by professional news organizations...And after that, free unicorns for everyone!

Re:Copy and paste the article text you want to use

[JasterBobaMereel]

So journalist wrote it for his paper, paper A gets copyright

Sells it to AP, delocalises it (20%) AP removes the byline

Paper B uses the AP text in another article (20% different), and credit AP, where is the credit for the original newspaper who wrote more than 50% of the final article, nowhere the only credit is to AP ..

Re:Copy and paste the article text you want to use

[Anonymous Coward]

They would still be wrong... If I find an aritcle but dont know who the author is or who owns the rights.. If I go to their website and they claim the article is theirs and charge me for it then they are making money off of work they dont own.

Re:Copy and paste the article text you want to use

[SatanicPuppy]

That is absolutely correct.

The point you're missing is that this stuff is 99% boring crap. It's stories about military base closures, and housing problems, and a whole host of other day to day happenings...Chances are the reporter won't even remember that they wrote the article a month later.

The big sexy articles very seldom get released to the AP, unless they're Features (human interest), and those are generally passed on complete, including the byline of the reporter and of the newspaper for which they write.

Copyright/Patenting is way out-of-hand

[Anonymous Coward]

I hereby patent and copyright every word, and every combination of words, in all human (and alien and animal) languages. Anybody uttering or writing or typing or otherwise communicating a word, or group of words shall make payment to me henceforth of $1 per letter + $10 per word + $10^N per group of words between fullstops. I also lay claim to punctuation marks and your mum.

I don't get it....

[Radical Moderate]

If I grow my own grapes, and I bring some to the supermarket, plop them on their scale and ask them how much I owe them, is it really their fault that they assume we're talking about their grapes?

Look, my contempt for the AP runs pretty deep, but what Grimmelman did is just asinine. Yes, AP is grasping at very flimsy straws to keep its business model alive, but they're not becoming the new SCO, claiming everything on the internet is their property. At least not yet.

You're confused about this.

[Estanislao Mart�nez]

If you don't own something you can't license it out, pretty simple.

You can, however, relicense something that's in the public domain. You're not even obliged to tell them it's public domain.

No, you can't "relicense" a public domain work. You can create copies of it and use them for any lawful purpose, and you can incorporate the whole or pieces of it into derivative works of your own. So can anybody else.

Remember that the word "license" is, fundamentally, the a fancy Latinate term for "permission." A public domain work is one nobody needs anybody's permission to use. You can't "relicense" a public domain work, because you can't deny other people permission to use it. You can make your own derived works that draw from it, but your copyright to your derived work only covers the your original contributions.

You do not haveto tell recipients of a public domain work, or derivatives thereof, about the public domain status of parts of the work. You can't prevent them from using the public domain material they got from you, though.

Re:Better Analogy and Why their system ain't broke

[ep32g79]

No, it would be like walking into Pepsi and asking them to license you the manufacturing rights to Coca-Cola and they do.

deceptive business practices are unlawful in NY

[MikePlacid]

>You can, however, relicense something that's in the public domain. You're not even obliged to tell them it's public domain.

It will be a deception (if not an outright fraud). New York (AP is in NY, right?) General Business Law #349 prohibits deceptive business practices. Up to 3 times damages.

You don't need much pocket money for this

[MikePlacid]

>I like parent post's concept, but suggest that slashdotters with a little extra pocket change license some RIAA protected lyrics from AP.

Their screwed up software is charging per word. Word is counted by blank. So: paste any lyrics, replace blanks with "-" and you will be charged for 5 words only ($12) no matter how long the song...

It's so stupid, I can't believe it.

Many real parts of AP articles are uncopyrightable

[MikePlacid]

>Anyone with any common sense, including a judge, would immediately note that you're supposed to use text from the article you're claiming to be taking excerpts from.

Yes, the original article just makes fun of AP. But this brain dead software can easily be exploited for profit, too. Here's an outline.

Many real (not fake) parts of AP articles are uncopyrightable. > 6 words, $17.50. But do they own a copyright for these 6 words? And who owns: politician? NBC? Doubt it: political speech. I've already paid the congressmen to pronounce it, haven't I? One thing sure: these words do not belong to AP.

They sold it to me anyway? Nice. If California law sticks, they own me $500: false advertising, deceptive business practices. Under NY law - up to 3 times damages. Just make this quote long enough. NY had some online small claims filing services, $14 per case...

Why not let AP own these words?

[Anonymous Coward]

"AP hereby gives slashdot.org and its posters permission to publish without cost nor limitation, any and all past, present, and future AP articles and photos."

(c) 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Yeah, that'd almost be worth $12 (US).

Just search it...

[TiggertheMad]

so the matter of checking my request against that content is covered by this groundbreaking algorithm.

LOL, so you want them to do a full text search of, what, the Internet? The library of congress? Suppose they hook up some Google servers, and search the net for the phrase you are buying. How are they to interpret hits? It could just be a blogger plagiarizing the story in question. You going to have a person monitor the search results? That was the whole point of automating it in the first place.

Re:Just search it...

[jesset77]

LOL, so you want them to do a full text search of, what, the Internet?

Well no, I was rather thinking it would be a good idea to focus the search to the matter at hand. AP's newswire. You know, the feed of original stories that they actually sell to subscribing journalists? It's kind of the core of their business, and it is delivered to every (modern) news office digitally over the internet.

So.. they already have the material sitting around on servers, and subscribing journalists already do full text searches through it to determine what news they wish to republish.

Of course, non-subscribing journalists have no access to the raw AP feed. That is what subscribers are paying for to begin with. Non-subscribers only have access to tertiary sources online, such as other subscribers re-printing and often modifying or adding to stories.

Thus, the target audience is in no position to tell if a quote is actually copyrighted by AP or not. It might be an extension of the original story, thus belong to the tertiary source. It might have been mistakenly posted with an AP copyright notice when it really came from Reuters. The only people in the world who can know for sure is AP themselves, or their paying subscribers.

However, I am certain AP does not care. Why should they provide any kind of actual service to people who aren't already paying them for full access to realtime feed? It's much more lucrative to spread copyright FUD like SCO and then try to convince bloggers to cough up funds for the privilege of feeding traffic to their subscribers. Either the sap will never be sued, or if they are their hard earned receipt (or the 1 out of a hundred that applies) won't be worth a thin dime when it actually matters.

Subject

[jesset77]

The guy lied to the AP (or rather their software), ... Taken in by his deception, they accepted the money. ... Clearly, they have committed a dastardly crime.

I know, right? It's called a test case. He demonstrated that the system was flawed by purposefully taking steps to cause it to express a failure state. Test cases are a Good Thing, you see it is best to discover problems like this before they are exposed disastrously in the wild.

When someone is trying to genuinely use the service, it is going to be because they are quoting a news story that says "Copyright AP" at the bottom. The user will by definition not be an AP subscriber. So, 2short: do you care to elaborate how such a hardworking sap, only trying to do the right thing, will be able to confirm who really owns the quote? Is it from the AP original text? Was it added by the tertiary source? Was it a typo, and the story was really from Reuters?

That is supposed to be the point of this tool. Contrary to your earlier misapprehension, it is not an overglorified word counter. If it were, it would be the most expensive kind I have ever heard of. Who wants a computer to count words for them so badly they would pay $12 for the service?

No, I am certain both you and AP will be perfectly happy when anyone tries to use the tool, then as they are sued for millions usd by the true author of any section of text either loosly- or mis-labeled as copyright AP by a tertiary source, then AP will email them back with "rats, sorry about that!" and refund the poor sap his $12. Of course, only for the 1 out of a hundred citations he has paid for that applied in such a case. Who knows how many of the other 99 AP collected on gratuitously?

More hilarious still would be when AP sues the schmuck anyway. Schmuck brandishes his icopyright receipt in court, and AP lawyers need merely cite TFA as evidence the tool is unreliable to begin with. Or else perhaps they could claim the licence was revoked just before schmuck published his citation; check your spam filter mebe? Well, we'll take the $12 out of the damages we're suing you for, just to be nice.

Re:Subject

[2short]

"So, 2short: do you care to elaborate how such a hardworking sap, only trying to do the right thing, will be able to confirm who really owns the quote? Is it from the AP original text? Was it added by the tertiary source? Was it a typo, and the story was really from Reuters?"

You're right! I hope they fix this tool soon, since until they do, confirming ownership of AP quotes will continue to be impossible, just as it always has been before now.

"That is supposed to be the point of this tool."

Not according to the AP, or any statement they have made. It seems, at the least, highly unlikely that the coder who wrote it thought that was the point. I mean, it's not that it does it badly. The tool makes no attempt whatsoever to do anything remotely related to ascertaining authorship.

  You can assume someone is doing something bad, ignore alternative explanations, and construct fanciful little courtroom dramas in your head where they reveal their nefariousness. But while you're at it, why not imagine someone who finds such inventions persuasive? You could save yourself the time of posting here, and just enjoy the fantasy.