From Brian Ledbetter who posted at Pajamas Media:
The Associated Press is at it again. Not content with attempting to bring about the end of Snapped Shot, my little wire-photo-critiquing hobby, they’re now going after the dastardly news commentators over at the Drudge Retort for alleged copyright violations.
Will they ever learn how this Internet thing works?
Back in March, I was delighted to receive a love letter from the AP’s legal department, which kindly informed me that they didn’t particularly care for me. You can read all about those travails in the piece I wrote for Pajamas Media back then. In a nutshell, I jumped through every last hoop I could to ensure that their lawyers were happy with me, and that they’d be content to leave me alone, sans their content. (Pun intended.)
It would seem that their new target is facing similar prospects. Rogers Cadenhead, proprietor of the Drudge Retort, posted on Friday that the AP had sent him not one, but seven take-down notices for article citations on his news aggregation website. He lists one example that the AP found extremely offensive, in which a user had committed the unforgivable sin of quoting 57 words out of a 442-word article — a dastardly 12 percent of the content!
I previously blogged about the censorship tactics the AP used against Brian here:
Link:
http://sfcmac.wordpress.com/2008/03/04/associated-press-thugs-threaten-blogger/
And their unmitigated gall to accuse the government of ‘censoring’ the media:
Link: http://sfcmac.wordpress.com/2008/03/07/ap-ceo-911-hurt-first-amendment/
The word nazis at the AP can add me to their list, since I’ve cited some of their articles on my webpage, as well.
I’ve a feeling that their hissy-fit litigation won’t go very far, especially when other news media and bloggers are all over this like stink on shit.
If it can be cut and pasted it’s fair use, as long as proper credit is given to the news or authored source as a link.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/treaties/berne/10bis.html
http://www.law.cornell.edu/treaties/berne/overview.html
The Associated Press likes to think of itself as a news monopoly that cannot be quoted or held responsible for its content or for that matter, its bias:
http://sfcmac.wordpress.com/2007/11/20/associated-press-terrorist-employee-finally-charged/
http://sfcmac.wordpress.com/2008/04/11/ap-reporter-who-embedded-with-terrorists-given-amnesty/
This just in: Screw you, AP. The more you pull this crap the further your reputation erodes. You’ve hit bottom and you’re still digging.