Fair use is a copyright concept whereby some people can use small excerpts of others' work without paying for it. The theory is that such use encourages greater innovation, commentary, and free thought in a free society.
Copyright holders loathe fair use and have tried for two centuries to squash it. The Recording Industry Association of America has made a living suing moms and dads and children for downloading music.
Evidently, the Associated Press wants to get in on the bad press action by bullying bloggers who dare to quote A.P. stories.
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.
On Saturday, The A.P. retreated. Jim Kennedy, vice president and strategy director of The A.P., said in an interview that the news organization had decided that its letter to the Drudge Retort was “heavy-handed” and that The A.P. was going to rethink its policies toward bloggers.
39 words is too big a quote from a story? Dana at Common Sense Political Thought tries diligently to limit direct quotations of copyrighted material. Me? Eh, not so much. If they wanna sue me for reproducing enough of a given work so that readers understand the story, I'm willing to take the risk that with 49 hits per day, no one will care. But such heavy-handedness by the A.P. simply encourages bloggers to bar A.P. copy from their websites.
The A.P. doesn’t get to make it’s own rules around how its content is used, if those rules are stricter than the law allows. So even thought they say they are making these new guidelines in the spirit of cooperation, it’s clear that, like the RIAA and MPAA, they are trying to claw their way to a set of property rights that don’t exist today and that they are not legally entitled to. And like the RIAA and MPAA, this is done to protect a dying business model - paid content.
You can't blame the A.P. for wanting to protect its lawyers' jobs.
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