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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 Grimmelmann adds an update to his blog: the AP has rescinded his license to Jefferson's words and issued a refund for his $12. They did not exhibit the grace to admit that their software is brain-dead.
Should be changed to "$.46-a-word" press.
DISCLAIMER: I am very rarely serious. If the above comment seems asinine makes no sense, it is most likely a bad joke.
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.".
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.
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!
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
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.
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.
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.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
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.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
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?
If you aren't suspicious of your government's actions, you aren't doing your job as a responsible citizen.
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!
The Hacker's Guide To The Kernel: Don't panic()!
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.
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.
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...
Will
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.