Serendipity35

Earlier this week I was reading a disturbing post about the Associated Press making a claim that the very popular Drudge Retort and its users linking to AP stories are violating its copyright. An AP attorney filed Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown requests demanding the removal of blog entries and another for a user comment.

The Drudge Retort is more of a community site than a straightforward blog like this one. You can compare it Digg because its more than 8000 users add their own entries of their own authorship and links to interesting news articles on the web, which appear immediately on the site. None of the questionable entries is the full text of an AP story.They are short excerpts of the articles.

I didn't post anything about this and since I first read that post I have now seen an update on The New York Times dated June 17 that "AP Rethinks Drudge Retort Takedowns." The Associated Press said that it will attempt to "define clear standards as to how much of its articles and broadcasts bloggers and Web sites can excerpt without infringing on the AP's copyright."

Times reporter Saul Hansell wrote (Wait - will I get in trouble for copying these words?):

"Last week, The AP 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 AP articles ranging from 39 to 79 words. On Saturday, The AP retreated. Jim Kennedy, vice president and strategy director of The AP, said in an interview that the news organization had decided that its letter to the Drudge Retort was "heavy-handed" and that The AP 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."

My reactions: 1) The original AP requests are disturbing for anyone who blogs. It should also be a concern for educators who frequently use excerpts from online resources. Sure, there's a different Fair Use line for educators and journalists, but its important to both groups. 2) The AP has been doing this with others before (like Digg) so this exposure is important. 3) The quick retreat by the AP can be seen as a kind of victory for bloggers, and 4) if the AP creates clear guidelines that might be useful. Might. Who said the AP gets to make the rules?  5) Quoting passages from online sources and linking to the original source is key to most blogs. Some blogs are entirely made up of selected items pulled from other sources. If this comes into serious legal question, it changes the fundamentals of blogging.