The Associated Press, Bloggers, Fair Use, and Common Sense

Good news: The Associated Press learned from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Titanic corporations using their power to squelch commoners isn't good public relations.

In "The Associated Press to Set Guidelines for Using Its Articles in Blogs" (The New York Times (June 16, 2008)), we learned: "Last week, The A.P. took an unusually strict position against quotation of its work, sending a letter to the Drudge Retort asking it to remove seven items that contained quotations from A.P. articles ranging from 39 to 79 words."

I get the impression that that's when the bytes hit the router, because on Friday the AP brass had a meeting and decided to change their minds. A little.

Someone speaking for The Associated Press "said that he still believes that it is more appropriate for blogs to use short summaries of A.P. articles rather than direct quotations, even short ones.

" 'Cutting and pasting a lot of content into a blog is not what we want to see,' he said. 'It is more consistent with the spirit of the Internet to link to content so people can read the whole thing in context.'... "

And, later, " 'We are not trying to sue bloggers,' Mr. Kennedy said. 'That would be the rough equivalent of suing grandma and the kids for stealing music. That is not what we are trying to do.' "

Looks like corporate America is still able to learn.

This is a serious matter. I agree with the AP that content creators should have their rights to what they made protected. I'm a content creator myself, as are most legitimate bloggers, and don't want others profiting over what I've worked on.

There are blogs and websites which consist mostly of copy-and-paste. I think that's self-defeating, in the long run. Eventually, readers will catch on and bypass the copiers. In my opinion, anyway.

Meanwhile, until the AP figures out what it wants, I'll keep on quoting excerpts, with links to the original. I believe that this is a win-win-win situation. We all benefit:

• Me, because I don't have to do the legwork it takes to research news and other original content
• The reader, since I've done the work of selecting an interesting page online and pulling out a few choice pieces
• The content creator, since I always include a link back to the original content - and the odds are that the snippets I provide won't be enough to satisfy an interested reader

No matter what The Associated Press decides, I'm not too concerned. There are many other news services out there, and I'm pretty sure that most are sharp enough to allow bloggers to send traffic their way.

Two more things:

• The United States Copyright Office has a pretty good plain-English resource on how American law sees "Fair Use."
• I got The New York Times and U.S. Copyright Office links from a BlogCatalog discussion thread, "Associated Press setting guildinles for Content Stealing" (started June 16, 2008).