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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