AP Gets Loonier About Copyrights — In the Meantime Don’t Excerpt From Them Unless You Have $$
(posted by Mona)
Below I wrote about the wackiness at AP vis-a-vis copyrights, and it seems that entity is getting even more bizarre in the face of unhappy reaction. That wire service is proposing a fvcking schedule charging bloggers per word excerpted:
The pricing scale for excerpting AP content begins at $12.50 for 5-25 words and goes as high as $100 for 251 words and up. Nonprofit organizations and educational institutions enjoy a discounted rate.
Guys. Guys. Ya ever heard of “fair use” doctrine? So far you’ve mostly been picking on small bloggers, but The Great Orange Satan is taking you on, and vows to keep excerpting, and just did. (Won’t do it here, cuz we can’t afford to defend ourselves in federal court even where winning is 95% assured, which is the heavy-handed leverage the AP sickos are relying on.)
But. What if we use some liberal and libertarian — and hell, even right-wing — email lists and get tons of A- and B-list bloggers to excerpt the same AP quote on the same day, hmmm? Carefully selected by a copyright lawyer to constitute fair use?
June 17th, 2008 at 7:55 pm
Some food for thought on this (and I admit I’m being deliberately simplistic and maybe even a bit intentionally disingenuous, but you’ll get the point):
The AP supposedly prides itself on just reporting the straight news, devoid of any opinion, essentially “just the facts.” The problem is that “facts” are not copyrightable. Which means that the AP is admitting that it does not report “just the facts,” but instead reports its writers’ interpretation of the facts. Which means that the AP is admitting that it is biased (I do not offer an opinion as to whether they are biased to the left or the right, just that there lawsuits are effectively an admission of some sort of bias).
Since everyone on the Left and Right is convinced that the media is biased against their particular point of view, I figure that an admission like that ought to provide all sorts of fodder for the fever swamps.
June 17th, 2008 at 9:40 pm
Mark,
Even the most objective reporting is imbued with a modicum of creativity. That’s enough to meet the standard for copyright, and that’s not even taking into account places where the “sweat of the brow” standard still applies (not the U.S., but I think it’s still a persuasive theory in European courts).
And the denizens of the ideological fever swamps have proved themselves quite willing to manifest outside their normal haunts on far less provocation than the AP “admitting” that reporters are not perfectly objective, which it wouldn’t have to do to claim protection for its work.
June 18th, 2008 at 12:22 am
Mike- I am aware of that. As I said, I was being deliberately disingenuous. My point is, however, that “just the facts” is impossible.
June 18th, 2008 at 4:41 pm
I’ve held AP in contempt since 2002, when they regurgitated the “news” fed to them by the U.S. State Department and CIA station in Caracas about Chavez “resigning.” On every single verifiable point of disagreement between them and Narco News Bulletin, Al Giordano was right and they were shameless stenographers for the U.S. national security community.
June 18th, 2008 at 5:05 pm
On every single verifiable point of disagreement between them and Narco News Bulletin, Al Giordano was right and they were shameless stenographers for the U.S. national security community.
Al G. and Narco News rock. Too bad we cannot post excerpts of what NN said, and where AP got it wrong. But I’m not up to paying AP for the “privilege.”
July 13th, 2008 at 9:22 pm
[...] adult religionists from handling them based on faith that they can come to no harm by doing so. AP (whom I should not be quoting) today reports: The pastor of a Kentucky church that handles snakes in religious rites was among 10 [...]