[Infowarrior] - AP to Set Guidelines for Using Its Articles in Blogs

[Richard Forno]

The Associated Press to Set Guidelines for Using Its Articles in Blogs

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/16/business/media/16ap.html

By SAUL HANSELL
Published: June 16, 2008

The Associated Press, one of the nation’s largest news organizations,  
said that it will, for the first time, attempt to define clear  
standards as to how much of its articles and broadcasts bloggers and  
Web sites can excerpt without infringing on The A.P.’s copyright.

The A.P.’s effort to impose some guidelines on the free-wheeling  
blogosphere, where extensive quoting and even copying of entire news  
articles is common, may offer a prominent definition of the important  
but vague doctrine of “fair use,” which holds that copyright owners  
cannot ban others from using small bits of their works under some  
circumstances. For example, a book reviewer is allowed to quote  
passages from the work without permission from the publisher.

Fair use has become an essential concept to many bloggers, who often  
quote portions of articles before discussing them. The A.P., a  
cooperative owned by 1,500 daily newspapers, including The New York  
Times, provides written articles and broadcast material to thousands  
of news organizations and Web sites that pay to use them.

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.

The quick about-face came, he said, because a number of well-known  
bloggers started criticizing its policy, claiming it would undercut  
the active discussion of the news that rages on sites, big and small,  
across the Internet.

The Drudge Retort was initially started as a left-leaning parody of  
the much larger Drudge Report, run by the conservative muckraker Matt  
Drudge. In recent years, the Drudge Retort has become more of a social  
news site, similar to sites like Digg, in which members post links to  
news articles for others to comment on.

But Rogers Cadenhead, the owner of the Drudge Retort and several other  
Web sites, said the issue goes far beyond one site. “There are  
millions of people sharing links to news articles on blogs, message  
boards and sites like Digg. If The A.P. has concerns that go all the  
way down to one or two sentences of quoting, they need to tell people  
what they think is legal and where the boundaries are.”

On Friday, The A.P. issued a statement defending its action, saying it  
was going to challenge blog postings containing excerpts of A.P.  
articles “when we feel the use is more reproduction than reference, or  
when others are encouraged to cut and paste.” An A.P. spokesman  
declined Friday to further explain the association’s position.

After that, however, the news association convened a meeting of its  
executives at which it decided to suspend its efforts to challenge  
blogs until it creates a more thoughtful standard.

“We don’t want to cast a pall over the blogosphere by being heavy- 
handed, so we have to figure out a better and more positive way to do  
this,” Mr. Kennedy said.

Mr. Kennedy said the company was going to meet with representatives of  
the Media Bloggers Association, a trade group, and others. He said he  
hopes that these discussions can all occur this week so that  
guidelines can be released soon.

Still, Mr. Kennedy said that the organization has not withdrawn its  
request that Drudge Retort remove the seven items. And he said that he  
still believes that it is more appropriate for blogs to use short  
summaries of A.P. articles rather than direct quotations, even short  
ones.

“Cutting and pasting a lot of content into a blog is not what we want  
to see,” he said. “It is more consistent with the spirit of the  
Internet to link to content so people can read the whole thing in  
context.”

Even if The A.P. sets standards, bloggers could choose to use more  
content than its standards permit, and then The A.P. would have to  
decide whether to take legal action against them. One important legal  
test of whether an excerpt exceeds fair use is if it causes financial  
harm to the copyright owner.

“The principal question is whether the excerpt is a substitute for the  
story, or some established adaptation of the story,” said Timothy Wu,  
a professor at the Columbia Law School. Mr. Wu said that the case is  
not clear-cut, but he believes that The A.P. is likely to lose a court  
case to assert a claim on that issue.

“It’s hard to see how the Drudge Retort ‘first few lines’ is a  
substitute for the story,” Mr. Wu said.

Mr. Kennedy argued, however, that The Associated Press believes that  
in some cases, the essence of an article can be encapsulated in very  
few words.

“As content creators, we firmly believe that everything we create,  
from video footage all the way down to a structured headline, is  
creative content that has value,” he said.

But he also said that the association hopes that it will not have to  
test this theory in court.

“We are not trying to sue bloggers,” Mr. Kennedy said. “That would be  
the rough equivalent of suing grandma and the kids for stealing music.  
That is not what we are trying to do.”