Associated Press going after webmasters on DMCA violations

[AnthonyCea]

The Associated Press is filing DMCA lawsuits against bloggers for excessive use their headlines and news stories without paying for them as a member publisher, AP believes publishers are going past the "fair use provision" of the copyright law by automated publishing of headlines and full excerpts of hot news stories.

Quote:

The "AP considers taking the headline and lede of a story without a proper license to be an infringement of its copyrights, and additionally constitutes 'hot news' misappropriation."

The AP sent DMCA notices to the Drudge Retort, demanding that the site to take down content that the AP believes infringes on its copyright. Seven notices were sent in total, some regarding headlines and first paragraph excerpts, but at least one referencing a two-paragraph excerpt from the end of an AP story. It seems the AP is serious about protecting all its stories from virtually any sort of excerpting.

The Associated Press is a wire service that sells license to reprint stories for a hefty fee to member press outlets. Contrary to what Marshall Kirkpatrick at ReadWriteWeb thinks, the AP doesn't have "inbound links" or "search juice" -- only member organizations do. The AP believes that by reproducing AP content without paying for it, the Drudge Retort is diminishing the benefit its pay customers get from its product. That is, why pay for AP content when you can just republish it for free?

This isn't the first time in recent months that AP has resorted to legal action against sites that it felt were misappropriating its content.

In October, the AP sued news aggregator Moreover for fair-use violations. That company, owned by VeriSign, provides news from a wide variety of sources to paying subscribers. The AP charged that Moreover was "scraping," or copying, the full text of AP stories and sending them to Moreover's customers without paying AP for the rights.

Unlike the Retort case, Moreover was accused of commercially using full-length AP stories without any payment.

[AnthonyCea]

Associated Press clarification statement issued on DMCA and copyright issues in regard to web publishers using excerpts and linking to AP content.

Quote:

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

[Zeschko]

Wow, that's quite heavy... So this means if I see a news story on website X and that news story originated at AP, I cannot copy any parts of that article for my forum and website? :( That sort of sucks.
The internet is about free information - that is free as in free as a bird, not as in free lunch - and this sort of thing doesn't exactly encourage that.

I wonder when they'll start going after small-time websites.

[DCortez]

When did the AP get into the news business???

[AnthonyCea]

They have been a newspaper syndication company longer than you and I have been alive, AP and UPI were the giants in news syndication when I was a kid 45 years ago.

If you use news articles to tell a story and it is fair use according to the copyright laws, you are unlikely to have a problem with Associated Press.

When you do cut and paste an article into your web content, it is fair use to use an excerpt and give proper credit to the original source you get the story from in the form of a link back to the entire article.

[DCortez]

Hehe, I was being a smart ass calling those DOHbama propaganda machines out.

[AnthonyCea]

Don't get me started on your ex-Governor "W" and Cheney !!

[DCortez]

I think you mean don't get us BOTH started on those two idiots.