Recently, The Associated Press(AP for short) has adopted a policy for bloggers who want to quote from their articles. The good news about it? None at least until Monday(more on that later). The bad news? The policy is a not-so-veiled attack on fair use.
Simply put, they want to charge you a fee depending on how many words you quote, starting at $12.50 USD for 5 words.
This all started when the AP filed DMCA notices against the Drudge Retort, claiming violations of fair use for quoting AP content. After initial outcry made them back off on the DMCA notices, they instead came out with a "license fee assesment" policy for quoting AP content.
The big problem with this is that it itself violates fair use principles, as quoting falls under it and there is no licensing requirement for fair use. In other words, they have no legal legs to force their policy on anyone. The most they can really ask is to cite/link back to their content.
On Monday, the AP will release a new set of "guidelines", hopefully grounded in actual copyright and fair use practices. That announcement hasn't stopped many bloggers from boycotting AP and using alternate sources such as Reuters. I believe, however, that the best way to send the right message to AP isn't by boycotting it, but rather do what they don't want: exercise our fair use rights. Quote and cite. If they don't like it, there isn't much they can legally do beyond attempting DMCA takedowns and subsequently get trampled in court.
And AP, remember: If you do somehow get the law to back your "policy", it will absolutely cut both ways. If you get to break fair use, so can everybody else, which makes life miserable for everyone(except lawyers).
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