The Associated Press took a grandiose Facebook-style faceplant…when it attempted to impose strict guidelines on the blogosphere.
Now, just like Facebook’s initial unapologetic enthusiasm for its privacy-violating Beacon program followed by Facebook’s effusive apology for its privacy-violating Beacon program, the AP is bowing to the will of the angry Internet masses and backing off. Sort of.
As part of the big mea culpa, the AP’s Jim Kennedy pledged to meet this week with Robert Cox, president of the Media Bloggers Association (which is, you know, kind of like meeting with the United Organization of Anarchists), and work up some sort of AP/Blogger Accord.
So mark the date kids, this is yet another moment in Internet history we’ll someday look back on in Wikipedia when we scratch our heads and try and figure out how cyber rights and responsibilities got to wherever this whole World Wide Web thing is going.
It all started with a letter from AP…to the Drudge Retort. AP requested that the Drudge Retort remove seven posts featuring quotes from AP stories. From there, it blew up into yet another full-on Internet conflict between Big Business and the Little Guys…
So – RTFA.
Michelle Malkin has come up with a bill of $130,000 for the times the AP has quoted her.
You are one toke over the line AP. Now … exhale.
Grey issue for me. They really are entitled to the copyright on their own material. We really shouldn’t copy whole articles from them or even large portions. We should just post a link, and maybe a paragraph or so.
For their part, they should lighten up a tad. Let’s just hope the guidelines end up being reasonable.
One might hope that they would see that if a blog posts a short excerpt of an article with a link to the longer story, they will get more readers overall from the people who click through. Those who were not going to click through weren’t going to go there anyway.
So goes the continuing battle of free culture verses intellectual rights.
I’m ALL for the value of sharing content, but I think most really don’t really understand what “free use” is. I think if people understood it, they’d know, at least in part, AP’s stand. Glad to see the AP backing down or at least clarifying their stance.
With regards to fair use, kudos to Colette Vogele on CNET’s Real Deal Episode 106 for an awesome explanation about it that has helped ME quite a bit.
A blogger is just a citizen journalist, without an editor.
Hey !!! Where’d you get that FINE PORTRAIT OF BUSH ???
#5 – edwinrogers,
A blogger is just an asshole with an opinion who feels the need to share it with the world. However, that’s just my opinion … and I thought I’d share it.
Is it OK to have this level of self-honesty?
#5 Not that most of the trained and paid journalists aren’t citizens of some country or another. This Citizen Journalists crap really needs to be replaced with phrase “untranined, unqualified wannabe journalists.”
Also, the vast majority are using the Internet to contemplate their navels.
#9 James Hill said, “This is quite an interesting story, as the AP’s goal is to control all media.”
I’ll disagree. They have zero chance to control all the media. They just want to get paid for their work. Mainstream media outlets pay for the AP feed, most bloggers do not.
Follow the money.
Information is (or should be) free to all to use. Just as long as you aren’t making a profit from someone else’s work. Notice that I said profit, and NOT simply “money”. Everyone makes some money from running their particular news service or blog site. But there are expenses that eat into that. And it would probably be impossible to point to any one contributing source as the main money maker for some site. So quoting an AP article (as they in turn quote blogs’) can’t be pointed to as a copyright violation. It’s not the same as publishing a book with text directly lifted from another source, un-credited. But I’m sure newspapers and the AP are quoting sources all the time, without permission or payment. And they’re making plenty of profit! Just don’t let the new kids on the block try it, eh? Or is this a backdoor agenda to get control of what’s being said on the internet. I’m sure a number of government types hate to loss of word control, since they can’t have their corporate partners control it as they do the papers and air waves.
A Blogger is a Blogger. A Journalist is a Journalist. Period. Some Bloggers practice Journalism better than most Journalists and some Journalists blog better than most Bloggers. All of this “are they the same or is one just a better version of the other” bullshit is… well, bullshit.
#9, James Hill,
Took too many Stupid Pills this morning?
… the AP’s goal is to control all media. So far it’s succeeding: Look at how many AP stories are in your local paper, or on your local news.
The Associated Press is owned by the various media outlets. Anyone may subscribe to its service and actually pay for their stories even if they don’t join. The Board is neutral and is represented by members from all news media types. So instead of every news outlet having a reporter in every city, they use AP to gather the same news their own reporter would have gathered.
They are also in the practice of paying their reporters. After all, the reporters, camera men, editors, and technicians all like to eat under their own roofs just like everyone else. Airlines and auto makes don’t give their transportation and hotels don’t give their rooms for free just because someone is from AP.