AP Targets Blog Excerpts With DMCA Notices 131
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."
Just another attack on Fair Use (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't forget the attribution!
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?
Re:Does this mean.. (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
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
Sites like The Drudge Retort are basically free advertising for the AP, but they'd rather sue.
Something truly unfortunate must happen to peoples brains when they put on a suit because it seems corporate execs never seem to quite have a grasp on how the real world works.
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.
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 for the people. No thought crime allowed. After all, this is a new time.
Poor them.
Re:Just another attack on Fair Use (Score:3, Insightful)
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 outside the MSN).
Re:Just another attack on Fair Use (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Totally out of touch (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 she began shutting it out.
Most people don't really want to know about this kind of thing, and that's why these news organizations continue to survive.
They offer a plausible way to continue to hide in the illusion our society isn't royally boned, because if they had to acknowledge otherwise they would have to do something about it, and they're too tired to do something about it.
Re:Good (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Does this mean.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Cite it (Score:3, Insightful)
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".
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.