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AP Targets Blog Excerpts With DMCA Notices
Posted by
Soulskill
on Fri Jun 13, 2008 06:15 PM
from the out-of-cite-out-of-mind dept.
from the out-of-cite-out-of-mind dept.
Ian Lamont points us to The Industry Standard, which reports that the Associated Press has filed DMCA takedown notices against news site 'The Drudge Retort' for excerpting portions of AP news releases. The site's creator, Rogers Cadenhead, has posted his analysis of the letters sent to him by the AP. Employees of the AP have defended the notices in posts on various blogs, saying, "We get concerned when we feel the use is more reproduction than reference, or when others are encouraged to cut and paste. That's not good for original content creators; nor is it consistent with the link-based culture of the Internet that you and others have cultivated so well."
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Just another attack on Fair Use (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't forget the attribution!
Re:Just another attack on Fair Use (Score:5, Interesting)
Searching for a news story produces hundreds of results on blogs that are just copies of one article, and it becomes frustrating when you want to find more information rather than just repeats of the same exact article text. A blog isn't an AP newswire feed (where it makes sense for a local newspaper).
Just link to the original at a persistent source. Blogs that are regurgitation and not reference are basically just Internet cholesterol, and if you step past your vein-popping at the mere mention of a DMCA takedown notice for a moment, people should be able to appreciate the effort of a news organization clearing the clutter. This is material that is available for free from any number of outlets. It's not about free speech or fair use in the slightest. It's about controlling distribution to improve quality of online news--not censorship, or commentary, or any other conspiracy.
They're not taking down commentaries that quote or reference.
Parent
Re:Just another attack on Fair Use (Score:5, Insightful)
I largely agree, except that it isn't just blogs who are guilty of this regurgitation. All the regular newspapers repost the same AP wire story, too, cluttering up google search results just as much as blogs.
Why do wire services still exist? Are we still pretending we get our news from separate sources?
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Re:Just another attack on Fair Use (Score:5, Informative)
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Attribution at commercial outlets is generally just as bad I think (maybe not for AP and hey they tow the line anyway so they can be credited alright, it's probably one button, but for smaller sources they're going to bulldozer along just fine then -- I've seen this consistantly while being only a reader of diverse sources, mostly outsi
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Do you even know what the AP is? (Score:5, Informative)
Do you even know what the AP even is?
The Associated Press was started by a bunch of small-town newspapers who individually simply couldn't even begin to compete against the major newspapers (mainly east-coast U.S. newspapers like the New York Times and Washington Post). Some of those major papers did allow these small town newspapers to reproduce their stories, but charged extortionist prices for the content.
So instead, a bunch of these much smaller newspapers decided to get together and share their own news gathering resources with each other and try to substantially reduce royalty fees for reproducing content. In a few cases there were "bureaus" that were set up and financed by the collective organization, but for the most part they relied upon a dispersed distribution model where the "members" each contributed stories for the general geographic region where they lived.
There was also a voluntary "significance" rating applied to each story as well, ranging from general human-interest stories (somebody just raised a two-headed snake, biggest ball of twine in Smallville, Iowa) to significant news (war has just been declared or a major world leader has been assassinated). Mainly it was newspaper editors trying to help each other out and fill each other's newspapers with content without having to break the bank with a huge payroll of reporters.
Frankly the AP in my mind represents nearly the spirit of the open source movement in a great many ways, even though it is a commercial entity. You can debate about the current incarnation of the Associated Press and its current operations, but it certainly has an admirable and interesting heritage.
The issue here isn't big bad business vs. lonely bloggers... it is more how a 19th Century American institution based on a distributed content model can adapt to the 21st Century, and how content intended for one medium is being adapted for a much newer medium, where the business model will change.
There are several blogger and web-based distributed news gathering sources that create original content (aka not copy AP stories), but unfortunately most of these bloggers are taking the easy way out and simply doing a direct copy of what is clearly copyrighted work. If these same bloggers would support (and reference) these alternatives, this would have been a non-story at all. Indeed many of these alternatives even post content with a free content license like CC-by-SA or something similar.
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Re:Just another attack on Fair Use (Score:5, Informative)
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I largely agree, except that it isn't just blogs who are guilty of this regurgitation. All the regular newspapers repost the same AP wire story, too, cluttering up google search results just as much as blogs.
What really bugs me (Score:5, Insightful)
1st... WHO CARES????
2nd... This creates the impression that the world is a lot more dangerous place than it really is.
3rd... again.. who cares? This isn't a famous person- they have no ties to texas... there is no reason for it to be reported anywhere in texas.
It's like talking about how wild monkeys are attacking a village in india last year.
I want my local paper to have local news. Heck, tell me about the flood control changes they plan ahead of time (instead of afterwards)- tell me about something happening in other texas cities.
The national stories should be in a national section and should be significant- not random.
Really bugs me.
Parent
You need to RTFA (Score:3, Informative)
It most definitely is an attack on fair use.
the sites are not plagiarizing the AP, they are posting quotes with relevant links.
Re:You need to RTFA (Score:5, Informative)
"AP wants to fill in some facts and perspective on its recent actions with the Drudge Retort, and also reassure those in the blogosphere about AP's view of these situations. Yes, indeed, we are trying to protect our intellectual property online, as most news and content creators are around the world. But our interests in that regard extend only to instances that go beyond brief references and direct links to our coverage.
The Associated Press encourages the engagement of bloggers -- large and small -- in the news conversation of the day. Some of the largest blogs are licensed to display AP stories in full on a regular basis. We genuinely value and encourage referring links to our coverage, and even offer RSS feeds from www.ap.org, as do many of our licensed customers.
We get concerned, however, when we feel the use is more reproduction than reference, or when others are encouraged to cut and paste. That's not good for original content creators; nor is it consistent with the link-based culture of the Internet that bloggers have cultivated so well.
In this particular case, we have had direct and helpful communication with the site in question, focusing only on these issues.
So, let's be clear: Bloggers are an indispensable part of the new ecosystem, but Jeff Jarvis' call for widespread reproduction of wholesale stories is out of synch with the environment he himself helped develop. There are many ways to inspire conversation about the news without misappropriating the content of original creators, whether they are the AP or fellow bloggers.
Jim Kennedy
VP and Director of Strategy for AP"
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I challenge you to actually look at them and distinguish them from typical posts and replies in
Re:You need to RTFA (Score:5, Interesting)
There was no "So Yahoo is running a story on..."
It was actually just a piece of Yahoo's story. So I can see the issue and they certainly did not look like a typical post and reply here on
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
That does not appear to be the case with The Drudge Retort (the site being DMCA'd). The site [drudge.com] appears to have a link to the original story and a short summary. I am not familiar with the site though so maybe they are talking about a different section.
replying to myself now that I RTFA (Score:3, Insightful)
The longest quote used was 2 paragraphs "from the end of the article." They don't say how long of an article though.
The article writer attempts to address fair use but just happens to leave out the "for the purpose of comment and criticism" aspect.
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Does this mean.. (Score:5, Interesting)
that /. could fall within the AP's sights as well? I glanced drudge.com and it looks like they have even less of a story on their front page than /. does. Of course here most (if not all) of the stories are prefaced with "According to..." or some other similar wording with a link back to the article.
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that /. could fall within the AP's sights as well? I glanced drudge.com and it looks like they have even less of a story on their front page than /. does. Of course here most (if not all) of the stories are prefaced with "According to..." or some other similar wording with a link back to the article.
Technically, /. is doing the exact same thing, the differnce? /. would fucking bury the AP if they tried that shit here, so the answer is of course to go after someone with less means to defend them selves, get a couple of good precedents on record THEN go after the big boys.
/. Anywher
Of course this is just another case of large corporations thinking they can litigate them selves into higher profits. They can't all they will do is alienate their customers and see their revenue go down.
My ONLY news site is
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/. would fucking bury the AP if they tried that shit here, so the answer is of course to go after someone with less means to defend them selves, get a couple of good precedents on record THEN go after the big boys.
Methinks you aren't that familiar with the Drudge Report. It is most definitely one of the 'big boys'
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/drudgereport.com [alexa.com]
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Re:Does this mean.. (Score:4, Interesting)
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Cite it (Score:5, Informative)
Every writing class you have ever taken since high school has taught you that if you use "excerpts" (which is all this guy said his users did), that you cite the original source.
Pretty basic.
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Ah, AP (Score:2, Insightful)
Poor them. For once the message may have been cut-and-pasted a bit too (un?)skewed for their tastes, or who knows, have contained actual unbiased truth (Dog help us!)
Poor them.
Yup they surely need the fascist DMCA to make sure they will remain the number one source of the whole truth and nothing but the truth
My Heart Bleeds (Score:2)
> others are encouraged to cut and paste.
Fair use. Learn to live with it.
> That's not good for original content creators; nor is it consistent with the link-based
> culture of the Internet that you and others have cultivated so well
Whereas AP articles, of course, are just chockfull of links.
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No. Fair use might be two or three paragraphs, not an entire news article.
Sour grapes much? If you don't like it, don't link to their stories or photos. Or, you know, go out and do your own journalism.
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What article might that be?
> Sour grapes much?
You think I want them to link to something of mine? ROFL.
> If you don't like it...
They needn't link if they don't want to, but but it seems hypocritical of them to attack others for not doing so.
>
I don't. I also don't link to anyone else's: I don't "blog".
Google has AP stories without clutter (Score:3, Informative)
Urinating into a gale (Score:4, Informative)
Totally out of touch (Score:3, Interesting)
Whatever the details of this particular case, whenever I hear things like "link-based culture" I just think how out of touch old journalism is with the Web. It's like they can't understand the deeper concepts like shared resources that linking implies.
Most big newspapers didn't really even establish much of an online presence until Web 2.0 was gaining momentum, and they're still trying to catch up. Web sites, like the Los Angeles Times, fear user-generated content like wikis because they can't figure out how to manage them. They don't trust the medium enough to embrace concepts like self-regulated systems that work through tagging, ratings, etc...
It really makes me wonder how these news sites will survive... consider that ABC News' idea of bringing in an online audience was to have someone with a laptop sitting with the commentators/anchors screening messages from Facebook; the internet is supposed to enable direct communication between individuals, not the same filtered meaningless content that's been called news for the last few decades...
Consider too that many wire articles that reference Web sites do not actually link directly to the Web site. Why? Do they not know how? Are they afraid of what people might see, or do they not trust the authenticity of the site? Maybe they just don't like the idea of people getting information directly from sources.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I told her flat out it's impossible to get un-biased reporting from the major news sources, and suggested she read the threads here.
I really don't know if I've gotten through to her though. I've mentioned how many liberties we've lost and how hijacked our judiciary, legislature, and media have become in the past 8 years, and when I did
Separation of Copyright and Press... (Score:4, Insightful)
...should become a central doctrine that every Constitution-loving individual should be touting to their representatives. When items of fact can be controlled through the premise of copyright protection, the *IAAs' will look like a child's prank compared to the censorship of thought and ideas that will arise by extending monopolies to cover facts.
Irregardless of ANY form of creativeness, press is a protection of the People that may neither be hindered nor prohibited by the State, and this includes Congress. Congress is granted the power to extend copyrights, or temporal monopolies on ideas and expression. Press, on the other hand, is a power of the People, which Congress has NO power to hinder.
Copyright in and of itself hinders the natural dissemination of an idea by restricting the distribution of that idea. Press was expressly included in the first Amendment as an exclusion to the powers of Congress in extending copyrights, that the dissemination of current and historic fact may not be controlled and censored.
If we continue to allow works of the Press to be treated as works protected under Copyright, than eventually we will no longer be allowed to claim the sky to be blue, for a fact to be true, or for 1+1 to equal 2, without infringing copyright and becoming enemies of the State.
Interesting Idea... (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously, how much value does a week-old news article have nowadays?
Copyright is great for "expressive works". It's not really good when applied to "facts".
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You are also confused (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:You are also confused (Score:4, Informative)
Domain name: drudgeretort.com
Registrant Contact:
World Readable
R.L. Cadenhead
PMB 120, 1093 A1A Beach Blvd.
St. Augustine, FL 32080-6733
US
Domain name: drudge.com
Registrant Contact:
World Readable
R.L. Cadenhead
PMB 120, 1093 A1A Beach Blvd.
St. Augustine, FL 32080-6733
US
Here's the "Real McCoy"
Registrant:
Drudge, Matt
ATTN: DRUDGEREPORT.COM
c/o Network Solutions
P.O. Box 447
Herndon, VA. 20172-0447
Domain Name: DRUDGEREPORT.COM
Administrative Contact, Technical Contact:
Drudge, Matt ez53n5895yz@networksolutionsprivateregistration.com
Matt Drudge
ATTN: DRUDGEREPORT.COM
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Re:Out Culture (Score:5, Informative)
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how on earth can you rain derision on drudge when
your support for "impossible dream" of using DRM to steal our rights and sell them back to us didn't help in eliciting a fully rational response either.
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B) I'm a writer. My copyright is mine, not yours.
C) Look up "fair use" and see if duplication of large sections of a copyrighted work has ever been acceptable prior to the advent of digital technology. It wasn't.
I like digital distribution. I hate thieves. Especially of my work, because when
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What I find the bestest is how much of a cocky ass you were about this when didn't even bother to have a clue what you were talking about.
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And furthermore, read what I actually wrote. I didn't say they did not link to the article. I pointed out that *UNLIKE* slashdot their "postings" had *NO* commentary. None. Zero. I don't mean the user comments. I mean scroll up on this page and find "Ian Lamont points us to The Industry Standard..."
Now replace everything in that article submission with a paragraph from the linked article. Then just link the headline to the a
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