Apr 08 2009
Stealing Or Free Advertising
AP news is not a very good news source, except it still has distant reach to far away places. It is a biased news source which is usually half correct at best in the information or message it conveys. It’s product is shoddy and I link to their stories for current events.
Right now AP is all upset because us bloggers note their stories and send our few readers their way, increasing their readership for free:
“We are mad as hell, and we are not going to take it any more,” said the chairman of the Associated Press, a cooperative of over 1,400 US newspapers, borrowing a line from the anchorman character in the 1976 movie “Network.”
“We can no longer stand by and watch others walk off with our work under misguided legal theories,” Dean Singleton said at a meeting this week of the Newspaper Association of America (NAA) in San Diego, California.
Singleton’s battle cry came just a few days after News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdochlaunched a broadside against Internet giant Google, whose Google News website is one of the most popular news aggregators on the Internet.
“Should we be allowing Google to steal all our copyrights?” asked Murdoch, the owner of newspapers in Australia, Britain and the United States, where his holdings include The Wall Street Journal and New York Post.
Google send readers to AP outlets who view advertising. Our little old website sends readers to AP outlets who view the advertising. AP calls this stealing, but an argument can be made AP is getting free advertising from the internet (small and large alike) because we are directing our readers to their product.Â
I guess I am going to have to reinstate the AP ban I put in place the last time this group went nuts. Personally, I think the news media should be paying bloggers to run their crappy stories. But what do I know? I only predicted the liberal bias in the news media would bring on its demise as it destroyed its only real asset – its objectivity which gave it a credible product. Why listen to me?
The “misguided legal theory” he is talking about is known as the “Fair Use Doctrine.”
Interesting choice of words. Here are some relevant quotes so that readers can determine just how “misguided” this “legal theory” is.
Excerpt from the Copyright Act of 1976, 17 U.S.C. § 107:
“Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 17 U.S.C. § 106 and 17 U.S.C. § 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.”
and from the leading judicial opinion on this topic, Folsom v. Marsh, 1841, (it’s not really a “new” theory, is it?)
“a reviewer may fairly cite largely from the original work, if his design be really and truly to use the passages for the purposes of fair and reasonable criticism. On the other hand, it is as clear, that if he thus cites the most important parts of the work, with a view, not to criticize, but to supersede the use of the original work, and substitute the review for it, such a use will be deemed in law a piracy…”
A long and detailed examination of the 4 factors test which is now applied. as well as some recent internet cases can be found at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use
for those who are interested.
I should add, they are announcing (and of course we have yet to see whether or not this is all bark and no bite) that they intend to pursue the same tactics that the RIAA originally took to try to fight the spread of MP3 files and the like. Sue and harass users with no ill intent in the hope of keeping a dying model going. The RIAA successfully killed Napster, but did this do them any long term good? Obviously not.
The RIAA failed and lost almost all of their previous customers as a result of this misguided effort. Once great recording companies are now among the has-beens of the internet era. It takes a few years, but if AP continues on this path, they will join them.
So you are caving into the “threat” of action by AP? That’s what I came away from your “AP ban.”
.
Just link to good stories… and… at least wait to get sued…
[or “bitten” as WWS puts it] …
WWS, most of the media – all of them, not just the newsies – seem to think things like “Fair Use” and “Public Domain” are misguided legal theories. Talk about foolishly greedy.
Is it wrong to hope they get frog-marched out of their corporate HQs when their companies go belly-up?
And for what its worth, I think AJ either shouldn’t link to AP stories, or label them as AP links. I try avoid AP when I can.
Its even worse than that, AJ. Apparently AP is attempting to use YouTube as a content distribution network. Works like this …
They put their content on YouTube. Then if someone links to it, they say you can’t unless you pay them. I don’t believe using YouTube as a for-fee content distribution network is within the terms of services. When you put something on YouTube, you basically make it available to the world. You can’t put something there and then attempt to control who uses it. In other words, you can’t put your own “Terms of Service” on top of YouTube’s.
It looks like AP is just trying to push the cost of distributing the content onto Google instead of hosting the content themselves. Yet they try to control distribution as if they were hosting it themselves.
More here.
Also, I am quite happy with UPI. Owned by the same people who own the Washington Times, BTW.