AP has kind of a bad habit of suing everybody. They have brought suit against Google, Moreover and All Headline News, and now they are attacking The Drudge Retort.
AP sent DMCA take-down notices to the Drudge Retort last week, along with a letter to Rogers Cadenhead, owner of the parody and social news site. AP cited seven instances of copyright infringement.
In six of the seven alleged infringements, the quoted material was between 39 and 79 words long (including direct quotes by persons who were subjects of the stories), and five of these used different headlines than the AP article. The remaining instance was comprised of a comment to a blog post that included a short quote from an AP article.
All of the stories had links back to the original corresponding AP content, so many were surprised that AP was making it an issue. It seems ridiculous, really; the amount of content quoted is not likely to decrease traffic – rather, it should have extra readers clicking on the AP link for more information.
In a fury, several bloggers announced that if AP wanted to play hardball, that was fine.
‘ Since the Associated Press apparently no longer wants traffic, we’ll start looking for other sources when linking to stories,’ came the response from Mike Masnick’s TechDirt. ‘I can’t promise we won’t link to any AP stories (they’re everywhere), but given the opportunity we’d prefer to link to a news organization that’s happy to accept our traffic, rather than one that might sue us for pointing people their way.’
Jeff Jarvis at BuzzMachine was not even that nice:
‘Who needs the AP tapioca when we can get reporting like this from the source wtih no more than a link? Isn’t it a better service to reader and journalist to link directly to the original reporting? So, bloggers, unless the AP recants and apologizes to Cadenhead, I urge you to avoid linking to the AP and to link to reporting at its source.’
AP may have bitten off more than it can chew by tangling with the blogging community. Backpedaling furiously seems to be the name of the game, as Jim Kennedy, VP and strategy director at AP stated Saturday that AP will suspend action against bloggers until a meeting can be arranged to set guidelines for fair use of AP content.
The notices to Cadenhead and The Drudge Retort, however, were not withdrawn.
Tags: AP, blogs, DMCA, The Drudge Retort