You’ve probably already heard this from another source, but if not please take a moment to familiarize yourself with the ridiculous recent wankery of the Associated Press, and, if you blog, make a commitment to boycott them by not linking to or quoting any AP material. AFP and Reuters are often good sources if you spot an AP story and need another source. Oh, and bloomberg for financials.
So, for those of you too lazy to click any of the links, what sins did the AP commit? It issued DMCA takedowns for posts and comments on a digg-like site called “the drudge retort” in which the posters or commenters had quoted pieces of AP stories from 33 to 79 words in length. The AP claimed “hot news misappropriation” under NY state law. The first link is to the blog of the owner of the retort and has examples of the comments the takedowns were against.
Okay, so that’s just silly DMCA abuse for something that’s pretty likey fair use, right? But in the AP’s defense, “fair use” can get kinda murky for most people, so kudos to them for committing to “attempt to define clear standards as to how much of its articles and broadcasts bloggers and Web sites can excerpt without infringing on The A.P.’s copyright,” right? Oh wait: more than four words and we have to pay.
Boycott the AP for being stupid. They may actually be on the right side of the law when it comes to quoting, fair use, etc. etc, but using the DMCA like that and demanding payment for quoting 5 words on the web? That’s not a business model. That’s dumb.
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