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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 Grimmelmann adds an update to his blog: the AP has rescinded his license to Jefferson's words and issued a refund for his $12.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.
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.
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.
Breakfast served all day!
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.
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.
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.