Ignoring the AP
I have to admit that I had forgotten about the Associated Press's dislike of being quoted in blogs, but several blog posts led me to this NY Times reminder:
Taking a new hard line that news articles should not turn up on search engines and Web sites without permission, The Associated Press said Thursday that it would add software to each article that shows what limits apply to the rights to use it, and that notifies The A.P. about how the article is used.
Tom Curley, The A.P.'s president and chief executive, said the company's position was that even minimal use of a news article online required a licensing agreement with the news organization that produced it. In an interview, he specifically cited references that include a headline and a link to an article, a standard practice of search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo, news aggregators and blogs.
But the Moderate Voice reminds us that AP could easily have opted out of search engines.:
For more than a decade, search engines have routinely checked for permissions before fetching pages from a web site. Millions of webmasters around the world, including news publishers, use a technical standard known as the Robots Exclusion Protocol (REP) to tell search engines whether or not their sites, or even just a particular web page, can be crawled. Webmasters who do not wish their sites to be indexed can and do use the following two lines to deny permission:
User-agent: * Disallow: /
Ed Morrissey of Hot Air thinks AP is only isolating themselves:
Besides, the AP doesn't get to determine what "fair use" means; Congress does. It has been a long-accepted practice for commentators to use small excerpts from articles in order to both report the news and to comment on its delivery. This goes back decades, when reviewers excerpted novels and media critics excerpted each other to deliver critiques. Just because the AP doesn't like copyright law doesn't mean it doesn't still applies to them. However, the threat of legal action and the cost to people working on small revenue streams will mean that their threats will mostly be effective.
I get most of my news through the internet, which costs perhaps about the same as I used to spend every month on newspapers and magazines. I used to subscribe to a lot of magazines. I feel bad that AP and the traditional media haven't found a payment system that works, but at the same time, I recognize that my internet experience of news and opinion is vastly superior to the MSM presentation of what they think is news.
I learn far more from TPM than from MTP, and enjoy it to boot.
Update: I heard NPR's On the Media today - an article called Copyright Flack in which a copyright lawyer was complaining about aggregated news websites. He wants to change the copyright law to prevent infringement claiming that links would not be affected, but I frankly didn't believe the rule change would be as benign as he claimed..
'Fair Comment'. What does that mean? We have Freedom of Speech but with many, many exceptions.
Copyright is one of those restraints. If you look into the case law you will find words like 'fair' and 'context' and 'reasonable' and on and on. Non definable terms.
We are facing a real problem with copyright in this country. I can find and play just about any song, any version of that song for free.
The reasons behind a force like AP--and it used to be AP and UPI--are gone. The AP is dead and has to come to some contractual agreements with NYT and WSJ or the biggest web sites around.
Thanks for the post Donal. I have not heard this story about this story mill. ha
July 26, 2009 9:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
Actually, they are eminently definable, in the sense that the statutor fair use defense is regularly asserted in copyright infringement claims and the validity of the defense on the facts presented is regularly adjudicated.
We may not like the way they get defined, but the beauty of stautory interpretation is that Congress can change the statute if the courts get it wrong.
The problem is that no one in the public gives a good goddam about intellectual property law and gigantic corporations do which means it is an area of law where people in Congress feel safe and comfortable whoring away their votes for campaign cash. Inevitably, this means that our I.P. law is written almost entirely by the industries that care most about it.
In the case of patents, this works out okay, because they same guys who want to protect their stuff have an equal and opposing interest in getting their hands on the other guy's stuff in a reasonable amount of time.
In the case of copyright, no one cares about seeing the other guy's stuff go into the public domain. Public domain reissues aren't all that profitable and it's a lot cheaper and easier to come up with new "content" than it is to come up with new inventions. Thus, copyrights now last forever. Whenever there's a chance that Disney's copyright on "Steamboat Willie" will expire, presto, another amendment extending copyright passes Congress.
So goes the chance of ever getting bad interpretations of the fair use defense fixed by Congress.
July 27, 2009 9:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
Interesting. I recall the first 'Disney' amendments to the copyright laws and I was pissed.
Its really not that applicable on the web for bloggers in the sense that few are citing materials that are twenty years old, but....
Good clarification here Steve, thank you.
July 27, 2009 12:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
I am really quite ambivalent about the very idea of copyright and intellectual property rights in general. The idea here is that if, to substantiate a point, I link to an AP article in a conversation on a thread at this site, then they are going to come to sue me for copyright. I find that idea not just annoying, but really strange. If they don't want people linking to content - i.e. being aware where to find it - they just shouldn't post it online, or firewall it. If I don't want people linking to pictures of me, say, doing the chicken dance naked, it's kind of strange of me to post them in the first place. Is it the sunday sun shriveling my brain, or is this just outright weird?
More generally, enforcing intellectual property rights online is starting to create a certain conflict. To do so effectively, they really have to violate space people would regard as private (think of Amazon accessing your Kindle to erase Orwell books, as just happened recently). So you have a conflict between property rights and privacy rights. And a good portion of the justification for such property rights is not a matter of 'natural law' but of incentives for innovation and research. I don't think the death of the music INDUSTRY is going to kill good music. People don't need the extra incentive of IP rights to make good music. Quite the contrary, as far as I'm concerned.
Anyway, Donal, just my half-baked thoughts emanating from my fully baked head...
Interesting stuff! thanks.
July 26, 2009 11:03 AM | Reply | Permalink
Obviously AP needs more income and wants to be paid, but instead bloggers are going elsewhere, like Reuters.
I think the problem is that I the consumer, have two choices for buying internet content:
1 - Browse free content,
2 - Pay a recurring monthly charge forever as if you were still getting a printed product.
July 26, 2009 11:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, but that doesn't speak to the issues about their strategy of 'sue for links'. They could go the way of the FT and have a subscription firewall. I'll link to the FT, they'll love it, and those without subscriptions will feel annoyed. But no one is getting sued in this configuration.
Maybe I'm missing your point...
July 26, 2009 11:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
They're going to sue people that link and don't pay them. They want their articles out there, they just want to be paid by someone. The question is who is willing to pay them for a link, when so many other links are free?
July 26, 2009 12:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
Still don't get it Donal. Maybe put me down as hopeless today. But I'll try again.
Linking to an article is tantamount to advertising that someone has some content worth reading. If they want people to pay, it should be for copying the content, not saying that some content on some issue exists in such and such a place. This is just beyond bizarre...
July 26, 2009 12:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
That's what happens when CFOs try to get involved in businesses they don't understand
The bunch lately running the AP are totally clueless. Mayb they came from the music industry.
July 26, 2009 1:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
People don't need the extra incentive of IP rights to make good music.
As a songwriter, I can't agree with you completely, although I do believe that excessive invocation of IP rights is inappropriate.
Those who create intangible and easily reproducible works must still buy milk and pay the rent, and enforcement of copyrights is one means of allowing these individuals to continue their creative efforts. The issue is not so much IP or copyright per se, but the need for mechanisms to ensure that the songwriters, authors, and others who do this are adequately remunerated. The music industry business model of the previous century is no longer viable, but it can't simply be scrapped without replacing it with something that will work. This may include various forms of licensing, fees for access to creations on a monthly or annual basis, or payments made to an entire professional sector that are shared through some equitable mechanism. One proposed example was a "surtax" on the purchase of CDrs that could be apportioned among music creators. It's fair to say that an ideal solution is not yet available, but one must still be sought.
July 26, 2009 1:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
Like I said, Fred, my thoughts are somewhat half-baked on this. And if your livelihood is at stake here I can see how you might have a different perspective on the values involved. My main point was that stamping out file-sharing - which is the central threat to the music industry - involves intruding into people's personal space, regulating what comes in and out of, and sits on, people's computers. Maybe there is a nice balancing act that can be worked out. Maybe my moral fiber is frayed in the wrong places, but I have little respect for claims of intellectual property rights. I don't do file-sharing personally, but I hold nothing against the kids who do. And I say this as someone who gets his yearly royalty payments on a couple of (academic) books.
I'd appreciate more of your thoughts on this some time...
July 26, 2009 2:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
My livelihood isn't at stake, Obey, because it's not my day job. It is for others, though, and so the dilemma of balancing IP rights against public access must be solved.
I don't know what solution will be ideal. Copyright law has always been a balancing act, and before the Internet, the main effort was to get the balance right. File sharing and the like have introduced a chaotic new element that no-one has yet addressed successfully. Certainly, it won't be solved by lawsuits as the main tool, although they can't be dismissed entirely.
I believe that what is needed is a new legal framework that insulates individual creative artists (e.g., songwriters) from the whims of individual Internet users. A more general mechanism would allow for some form of remuneration to flow into a pot whose proceeds are then distributed equitably. If this sounds too general, it's because I really don't have any very good specific ideas.
July 26, 2009 3:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Have you seen the Digital Millennium Copyright Act?
July 26, 2009 4:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
But while some musicians, most famously Metallica, are very much against distributing their music digitally, others, like Janis Ian, see it as a great way to bypass the music industry and radio industry and get their music out there to new fans. To a certain extent the music industry is comparable to the MSM, who also like their star system and see the internet as a challenge to profitability.
July 26, 2009 7:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
Link, please.
P l e a s e
July 26, 2009 2:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Mine too, Obey, and everyone else playing with theme. I've thought for awhile about writing a little on this, but I'd rather leave it to the lawyers to get the ball rolling. From the historical point of view, this property "right" is centuries newer than John Locke's first exploration of the idea of property rights in general. I guess one of the reasons I find thinking about this intriguing is that so many great works of art and intellect were produced without intellectual property protection...it would seem to me to prove that people would continue to think and create, and distribute the results of their thinking and creating whether or not their "ownership" was defined and protected by law.
Am I allowed to think about an idea I didn't create? Can I whistle a tune going down the street? How many notes constitute a tune? (That last question isn't as ridiculous as it seems--cases are moving through the courts on this issue as I type). How often Bach borrowed from Vivaldi and others. How often most composers of the classical genre dipped freely into the realm of the musical commons Gaudeamus IgitureBrahms.
Or for that matter, if the Shakers has copywrited "Simple Gifts" would Aaron Copland have to have obtain a license to write Appalachian Spring?
Thanks for starting my brain going on this, and thanks to you, Donal, for giving Obey a reason.
July 26, 2009 8:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for that Amike. It's an interesting topic, though I'm happier leaving it in your steady hands rather than those of the legal profession. It's more legal/social philosophy and history than it is strictly a legal issue. Across the ages, attitudes have so changed regarding intellectual property - look at all the damn plagiarism in antiquity, and reverse-plagiarism: trying to pass your drivel off as Aristotle. The problem wasn't regarded as protecting IP, plagiarism was the norm, but rather weeding out those attributing something falsely as the property of others. Beyond the attitudes, there is what you allude to - the different social setups that permitted scientific, artistic, technological progress. Academia may be skewing my perspective on this, but the idea of 'protecting' my ideas, however meager, is nonsense to me. The more people using them, the better. Though it's nice when I'm credited and my intelligence acknowledged.
Anyway, just more half-baked thoughts...
July 26, 2009 9:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
And of course the only way we know what Socrates "said" is through what his pupils wrote. I'm hoping a few of my students may do that favor for me.
July 26, 2009 10:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
(clap clap clap clap)
July 26, 2009 11:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
(memo to self - take down those pictures...)
;oP
July 26, 2009 11:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
I don't know. I just have to acknowledge that the chicken and the pug have me laughing this morning. hahaha
July 26, 2009 1:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hey, thanks for sending me that link! I don't blame you for not sharing it with anyone else -- Wow! Just WOW!
July 26, 2009 2:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
hahaha!
I'm SOOO suing you if this gets around!
July 26, 2009 2:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
There is more than one reason to ignore the AP. They have become far less neutral and factual in their reporting. Once a trusted source... now seems to have been compromised by ownership or management to occasionally use ridiculous sources and provide substandard reporting.
July 26, 2009 12:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
I was kinda thinking the same thing, Synch.
July 26, 2009 9:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, that's what makes it Intellectual Property, ya see. Instead of providing a compilation of facts, they take these events and create a story that often has nothing to do with what actually happened and they want credit for that, in the form of money. The news is now a creation of responses that have not yet happened rather then an account of events.
For instance, the American people do not want Single Payer Healthcare. Yeah? Who did they ask and when?!?!?!?!?!?
July 27, 2009 1:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
A seriously funny thread.
July 26, 2009 4:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
The news as it is delivered today is very much commentary because most news sites fail to deliver a full set of facts surrounding an issue. The news then becomes a glorified blog expressing an idea that begs to be commented upon. If you don't want your ideas or views to be examined or discussed then don't post them in the public square. The AP wants to pretend this isn't a public dialog or that their ideas have a monetary value that differs from ideas of others. This will never fly because it falls under protected speech. If you comment on something anyone and everyone has a right to refer to your comment and respond to it in whatever way they see fit. This is nothing less than people with money trying to control the marketplace of ideas to get more money.
July 27, 2009 5:49 AM | Reply | Permalink
To be fair, let's suppose Reuters, McClatchy, or TPM, is reporting just the facts, and are performing a lot of good journalistic work, and are paying their reporters well and don't have editors that bend to the will of the powers-that-be. What is a good payment system for such a site?
Should they let everyone else link to their good work for free, with the expectation that will increase notoriety and circulation?
Should they post teasers and put their best stuff behind a pay wall, like the WSJ?
Should they determine some small fee per issue or article - much like the cost of buying paper?
July 27, 2009 7:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
I've no idea how people with ideas and who generate content should be paid or what the guidelines should be.
I think that needs to be held separate from the dialog itself to prevent a corruption of the ideas. The assignment of a dollar value to thinking and expressing a point of view, something we already have too much of, is sure to add to an increasingly corrupt society. We already have a fair understanding of how the concentration of wealth can have a negative impact on society. If you take it this last step and somehow formally define thinking and public expression in economic or capitalist terms, it's over.
July 27, 2009 8:11 AM | Reply | Permalink
But I'm talking about *reporting* not expressing one's view. Reporting presumably involves the sort of leg work, phone work, fact-checking, etc. that link-bloggers rarely do themselves.
July 27, 2009 10:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
Donal, I think you know these shortcomings are in no way unique to bloggers. But then you did say, 'presumably'. Plus I think there is a problem with 'reporting' because of what is said as much as what isn't said. We are treated to news reports all the time that leaves out salient information. That isn't reporting to me. I want to be informed, not misinformed or mislead. Any American who wants to be informed has to really work at it. Why do you think that is?
July 27, 2009 11:29 AM | Reply | Permalink
Free advice is worth every penny.
July 27, 2009 11:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
Free ain't all it is cracked up to be. In this day and age I avoid free like the plague. It almost never is.
July 27, 2009 12:01 PM | Reply | Permalink