Associated Press Takes Aim at Blogs

The Associated Press has filed 7 DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) takedowns against the Drudge Retort, a community blog much like BlueNC. According to editor Rogers Cadenhead:

I'm currently engaged in a legal disagreement with the Associated Press, which claims that Drudge Retort users linking to its stories are violating its copyright and committing "'hot news' misappropriation under New York state law." An AP attorney filed six Digital Millenium Copyright Act takedown requests this week demanding the removal of blog entries and another for a user comment.

:::snip:::

None of the six entries challenged by AP, which include two that I posted myself, contains the full text of an AP story or anything close to it. They reproduce short excerpts of the articles -- ranging in length from 33 to 79 words -- and five of the six have a user-created headline.

The bloggers' position is that the links and use of brief excerpts constitutes fair use. Not so says Associated Press.

AP feels otherwise. In a June 3 letter, AP's Intellectual Property Governance Coordinator Irene Keselman told me:

... you purport that the Drudge Retort's users reproduce and display AP headlines and leads under a fair use defense. Please note that contrary to your assertion, AP considers that the Drudge Retort users' use of AP content does not fall within the parameters of fair use. The use is not fair use simply because the work copied happened to be a news article and that the use is of the headline and the first few sentences only. This is a misunderstanding of the doctrine of "fair use." 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.

"Hot news" misappropriation? Wow. I guess from now on we will need to wait three more seconds until Reuters has the news posted before we link to a news article.

When I received the first email I didn't have time to follow up. I've since found that several blogs are calling for a boycott. Normally, I would shrug and move on, but since the AP isn't the only source for breaking news, I'm more than happy to link to Reuters for a while.

At BuzzMachine, Jeff Jarvis has taken it a step further and called for a protest that involves the wholesale copy/paste of at least one article as a show of solidarity. This brought someone from AP out of the wood work. While his comment sounds reasonable, it doesn't mesh with the actual facts surrounding the threat of legal action.

Atrios has linked to the story and has dubbed the AP, "Wanker of the Day".