Comments on: AP as copyright cop

By: Silly Ratfaced Git

Silly Ratfaced Git — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 17:23:01 +0000

The real problem for the Asshat Press (unannounced name change noted) is that facts can not be protected by copyright. Since proper journalists are trained to report facts, there are significantly less copyright protectable elements in a news story than in a fictional short story. This is what leads to the observation that a short summary of the story is non-infringing, while a short quotation is possibly infringing.

The AP seems to feel that fair use is unavailable to bloggers. I call BS.

BTW, they don’t eat their own dogfood: AP Violates Own Copyright Law By Quoting 22 Words from TechCrunch
SRG

By: Jon

Jon — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 13:42:10 +0000

Hi Dan: "This has been nicked from: p2pnet.net - not the lamescream media" didn't convey what I meant, so I've just changed the tag to "p2pnet.net - not the lamescream media". Meanwhile, p2pnet stuff gets nicked all the time, including by the mainstream media, but as I've said from the beginning, although I'd appreciate it if people would give credit where credit is due, bottom line, the object of the exercise is to get the word out, not score mentions. And as I said in my first post on this, "I'm always at pains to provide a first link the originals in the body copy, as well as mentions within stories, and to add a link to the headline and date at the bottom of each." Cheers!

By: Dan

Dan — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 13:27:50 +0000

While I get the anger and outrage from bloggers, but what’s missing is the balance on the flip side – I’m pretty sure none of the bloggers involved would like to have *their* content used, “stolen” (tongue firmly in cheek here), or otherwise misappropriated in a similar way. I suppose it’s easier to crab at the big mean corporation that produces content professionally…

Just look at the tag that comes at the bottom of every one of p2pnet.net’s posts in your RSS feed: “This has been nicked from: p2pnet.net – not the lamescream media

It’s not an easy problem and AP is at least trying – ham-fistedly, but they are trying.

meh.