The AP is setting guidelines to “attempt to define clear standards as to how much of its articles and broadcasts bloggers and Web sites can excerpt without infringing on The A.P.’s copyright.”
This is a bit troubling. Short of taking an entire article without comment, it’s hard to see how commenting on the news from one of the few sources that can afford to have bureaus around the world isn’t fair use free speech. Since the stories are primarily factual, in many cases political, and short (so there’s no “heart”) I would guess the guidelines will come down to a number of words or seconds they will “allow” a blogger to use. My question is: will they consider this a license?
This was funny, though:
“We are not trying to sue bloggers,” Mr. Kennedy [of the Associated Press] said. “That would be the rough equivalent of suing grandma and the kids for stealing music. That is not what we are trying to do.”
Another quick thought… where does this leave aggregators that automatically pull in entire stories (like our friends NewsObama.org)? How is this different than copy/pasting an entire article into a blog entry.
I’ve been wondering that myself!
😉
Doug