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AP wants blogging standards
Concerned about improper use of its copyrighted material, the Associated Press has announced that it plans to work with the Media Bloggers Association to begin developing guidelines for bloggers who quote AP stories. AP spokesman Jim Kennedy said AP’s concern is two-fold: From a journalistic standpoint, the organization is concerned about its material being quoted out of context; from a business perspective, AP wants to guard the value of its product.
“We need to protect our content, no matter who’s using it, but we also recognize that the bloggers perform a really important function on the Internet in terms of increasing the engagement of the audience online, and we want to facilitate that,” Kennedy said.
Such future guidelines would apply to all of us here at WMB, so stay tuned for further developments.
back to top17 Comments to “AP wants blogging standards”
I get stuff forwarded to me all the time. How would copywrite restrictions from AP affect that??
I still chuckle whenever there are politicians who denounce countries like China. They and other countries have horrific plain old human rights records, but the politicians caterwaul on and on about violations of property rights, copywrites etc
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The AP has no grounds for this. The copyright laws already include ‘fair use’ exemptions that spell out when and how copyrighted material can be used by other.
In short: Posting an entire AP article on your site would violate copyright. Posting a short excerpt with a link back to the original article does not — and the AP can’t change that no matter how hard they stamp their feet.
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“We need to protect our content, no matter who’s using it,”
Well first you have to have content…
Seems like many of these news organizations just cut and paste from each other’s content anyway. And many times the quality of the reporting doesn’t seem that good.
Couple that with the blatant lying and plageurization of late, and I just can’t care very much about their “rights”.
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Some bloggers have just refused to link to AP articles due to this. There is already plenty of similar content by reuters and others that this seems like it will hurt AP more than help.
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Am I the only one that finds it somewhat hilarious that an organization which regularly misquotes or uses partial quotes is upset that others are doing the same to them?
Should we also restrict conversation in groups larger than say, 20?
I agree – people should strive to maintain the integrity of any written or spoken work they quote – and mistakes happen. But – because the AP prints a report containing public information, does it make it their personal property?
Perhaps bloggers should resort to a common journalistic tactic – “unnamed sources close to the AP report…”
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Here’s a quote for you (not AP):
Every 5 – 25 words are set to be worth 12.50 dollars and in addition, if a person finds someone quoting AP without the license then that person can get 1 million dollars for reporting the lift.
The ASSociated Press must think they’re special or something. Oops! Did I just use one too many caps?
Oh, this quote wasn’t from the AP, so who knows how reliable or factual it is.
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…make that two too many caps.
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On second thought, yes, let’s have some standards and enforce them on the AP….
No more half truths, no more doctored photos, no more liberal journalistic slant, no more smear campaigns against presidents you disagre with, no more outright lies, no more plageurism.
Get caught doing this and we’ll fine the hell out of you.
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Here’s your fair use:
Here’s the actual AP page.
So let’s try this out.
That much is free! I love free stuff!
Aw, drat, that word just cost me $12.50.
Oh no! Now I’m up to $17.50!!
51 words! That’s 25 big ones.
169 words all told. This blog post just cost me $50.00.
No, wait, I’m getting word that since my post is “damaging to the publisher’s reputation” I am no longer allowed to use it. Oh, well. I should have known better than to criticize.
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I think I remember someone on here the other day saying that anything that is printed/published is public domain and can be reproduced as long as it credits the source. I didn’t refute it then, but believe it to be untrue. I’ve done organizational newsletters a lot over the years and was taught that the rule of thumb is that you cannot include a direct quote of more than a sentence or two but that you can paraphrase and sprinkle with quotes.
OTOH, I think this is a losing battle for these organizations and they may as well give up and try to figure out how to use it to their advantage.
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Truly ironic, considering AP’s relentless uncredited use of bloggers’ material, most recently the e-mail from Judge Kozinski’s wife to blogger Patterico, defending her husband.
http://patterico.com/2008/06/16/ap-reports-on-marcy-tiffanys-e-mail/
http://tinyurl.com/4787sm
http://tinyurl.com/4gl8ut
http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/archives2/020592.php
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Mommy’s actually right …. printed material MUST be cited, and direct quotes acknowledged WITHIN THE TEXT. In academic papers, the writer has to go ahead and cite all works–even those only used for reference/learning–and acknowledge paraphrases in the text.
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from the article: AP “doesn’t get to make its own rules about how its content is used, if those rules are stricter than the law allows.”
If AP really does own the copyrights to its stories, and stories are marked as “All Rights Reserved,” then can’t AP make any rules it wants about its content? Just like commercial video creators say that their DVDs cannot be played in a public arena but only in private. This is what copyright is all about – protecting the wishes of the creators.
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Kimberly, The point I was trying to make was that full articles cannot be replicated in print, even if they are cited. Not at all sure how that applies to the blogshpere and links, though.
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SteveHu: If AP really does own the copyrights to its stories, and stories are marked as “All Rights Reserved,” then can’t AP make any rules it wants about its content?
No, not entirely. U.S. copyright law includes a provision called “fair use” that allows for limited reproduction of copyrighted work without the copyright holder’s consent, for specific purposes.
Here is some information on it.
From the link: The 1961 Report of the Register of Copyrights on the General Revision of the U.S. Copyright Law cites examples of activities that courts have regarded as fair use: “quotation of excerpts in a review or criticism for purposes of illustration or comment; quotation of short passages in a scholarly or technical work, for illustration or clarification of the author’s observations; use in a parody of some of the content of the work parodied; summary of an address or article, with brief quotations, in a news report; reproduction by a library of a portion of a work to replace part of a damaged copy; reproduction by a teacher or student of a small part of a work to illustrate a lesson; reproduction of a work in legislative or judicial proceedings or reports; incidental and fortuitous reproduction, in a newsreel or broadcast, of a work located in the scene of an event being reported.”
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I love it when our conservative friends turn socialistic. AP doesn’t own their product – it belongs to the people!
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Oh, don’t get me wrong, even though I’m rather cyncial about the news outlets, I’m all for AP owning their own product. But there are laws against false advertising… And there should be journalistic standards – which seem to be ignored more than they should.
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