AP Files 7 DMCA Takedowns Against Drudge Retort

mytrip points out a blog posting by Rogers Cadenhead, author of the Drudge Retort blog, who says: "I'm currently engaged in a legal disagreement with the Associated Press, which claims that Drudge Retort users linking to its stories are violating its copyright and committing 'hot news' misappropriation under New York state law." An AP attorney filed six Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown requests this week demanding the removal of blog entries and another for a user comment. The AP material they object to consists of snippets of from 33 to 79 words. Cadenhead claims his lawyer believes that all fall squarely within the province of fair use.

My first suggestion

Is to figure out if it's six or 7.... article says 7, summary says 6.

Re:My first suggestion

In other news, I'll go ahead and try to figure out of it's 6 or six.

AP Stylebook

Consult the AP stylebook.

Re:My first suggestion

An AP attorney filed six Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown requests this week demanding the removal of blog entries and another for a user comment.

six for blog entries plus one more making seven.

Interesting quote from the AP

One of the problems with the AP is that their whole business model isn't so different from providing an RSS feed these days. Fair use here may be an interesting case, because blogging might well cut down on their (obsolete) business model and because there's no limit to how little you can quote while being fair use. In fact, because this would seem to impact upon their business, the fair use case may be harder to make.

That said, they have an interesting way of justifying things [nytimes.com]. Pay attention to those last few lines:

Mr. Kennedy argued, however, that The Associated Press believes that in some cases, the essence of an article can be encapsulated in very few words.

"As content creators, we firmly believe that everything we create, from video footage all the way down to a structured headline, is creative content that has value," he said.

But he also said that the association hopes that it will not have to test this theory in court.

"We are not trying to sue bloggers," Mr. Kennedy 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."

That's right. They're saying at least we're not as bad as the RIAA. Where's NYCL? :-)

Re:Interesting quote from the AP

One of the problems with the AP is that their whole business model isn't so different from providing an RSS feed these days.

An RSS feed delivers summaries of news stories. To create those stories, somebody was paid to go out (outside - you know, leave the computer and keyboard behind?) and gather news and photos. That's qualitatively different than delivering an XML feed, wouldn't you say?

blogging might well cut down on their (obsolete) business model

The blogosphere is largely an echo chamber, with no voice (i.e. reportage) of its own. No voice, no echo, no blogosphere... get it? Original news reporting happens outside that sphere, then it gets repeated, via RSS feeds, copy-n-paste etc., within it.

Without actual news stories to quote and make fair-use copies from, bloggers would be left to writing about taking their dog to the vet, or how the baby barfed on grandma's shoes, or whatever.

I mean, look at /. - with no stories to link to, we'd all be talking about Linus's latest kernel module, now wouldn't we?

And in other news....

SourceForge, Inc. files 32,819 DMCA notices against its daughter site, Slashdot.org, for blatantly reproducing its own stories, such as this [slashdot.org] one.

The length of the quot e not important in absolute

All will agree that this is fair use if drudge retort quote 79 words out of 790. But this is less defensible if the quote is 79 words out of say, 91.

Re:The length of the quot e not important in absol

"as long as drudge is providing the info where they took the quote stuff from, i don't see how AP has a case in this. They provide a link to original story on AP its not stealing if you are giving the credit to the original writer in these cases."

There's a persistent meme on Slashdot that artists should be happy that their stuff is simply being shared and listened to. If they make even a peep about trying to make a living from their craft, they're branded as greedy businesspeople, not artists.

Looks like people are starting to think the same way about journalists, too. That's sad.

If the Drudge Retort fellow thinks that there's not much value to the AP articles which he excerpts, then great -- he can stop using them, and switch to a news service which is less profit-oriented and which allows free distribution of their content (provided he can find a suitable replacement). But if he thinks that using the AP source material is a benefit to his site and to its readers, he can license it, just like real news sites do.

He seems to be playing it down the middle -- the AP content is worth reproducing on his site, but not worth paying for.

The AP Has Retracted Its Complaint

Under heavy criticism from people who actually know how the Internet works [dailykos.com], the AP has retracted its DMCA complaints:

Last week, The A.P. took an unusually strict position against quotation of its work, sending a letter to the Drudge Retort asking it to remove seven items that contained quotations from A.P. articles ranging from 39 to 79 words.

On Saturday, The A.P. retreated. Jim Kennedy, vice president and strategy director of The A.P., said in an interview that the news organization had decided that its letter to the Drudge Retort was "heavy-handed" and that The A.P. was going to rethink its policies toward bloggers.

The quick about-face came, he said, because a number of well-known bloggers started criticizing its policy, claiming it would undercut the active discussion of the news that rages on sites, big and small, across the Internet [...]

But the AP still doesn't really get it (if it can get away with destroying it, where "it" is "fair use"):

Still, Mr. Kennedy said that the organization has not withdrawn its request that Drudge Retort remove the seven items. And he said that he still believes that it is more appropriate for blogs to use short summaries of A.P. articles rather than direct quotations, even short ones.

"Cutting and pasting a lot of content into a blog is not what we want to see," he said. "It is more consistent with the spirit of the Internet to link to content so people can read the whole thing in context."

Re:The AP Has Retracted Its Complaint

Yes, IFRAMEs don't serve to let the publisher of the external content control the integrity of what they're "pointing to".

If HTTP included content signing that could at least let the publisher of the link help readers clicking it to see that the target content has changed. Eventually there will probably be a "distributed archiving" system that points at URIs, "content names", rather than URLs, which point at "content location", regardless of whether the content changes.

In the meantime, "fair use" quoting isn't just fair. It's more fair than the content publishers who bait & switch when their original content brings blowback pressure they don't like. AP has to get with the 20th Century laws if it's going to survive in the 21st Century. That's why it's trying to change the laws in the 21st Century, so it can drag us back to 19th Century yellow journalism that pays, but doesn't inform.

Yellow is better

In case you haven't noticed, we're better informed now in the 21st century thanks to yellow blogs. It's the 20th century supposedly unbiased news sources that kept us dumbed down -- the populace places too much trust in the mass media and consequently the mass media has become a puppet of the power elite.

The so-called "neutral point of view" came out of the Progressive Era, and like so many things of that era sold as a way to help the little guy, ended up being an instrument of The Man. Give me bias -- explicitly stated bias -- any day. It's a lot easier to understand that way.

Re:Yellow is better

In case you haven't noticed, we're better informed now in the 21st century thanks to yellow blogs.

Better informed. Heh.

Yellow journalism is a pejorative reference to journalism that features sex scandals, scandal-mongering, sensationalism, or other unethical or unprofessional practices by news media organizations or journalists. It has been loosely defined as "not quite libel".

If you think the blogging version of ^that^ has produced a more informed populace...
Then you must be using a different definition.

I don't disagree with the premise that blogs have allowed for more information (some of it even manages to be factual)
But don't forget that a wide swath of blogs are just echo chambers for misinformation.

Example: Barack Obama is a muslim [google.com]
As of this posting, about half on the front page say he is and half say he isn't

It really doesn't matter....

IMO, the fact that they could do so is evidence, and damn strong evidence that the system is broken. Not broken a little bit, but completely broken.

The story as it goes is stupid. It would not happen if the Drudge Report was a high school newspaper. This is simply an attempt to quash competition using the DMCA. A government tool provided for their friends to squash anyone that might dissent. Canadians? Listen up... this kind of thing is on it's way to you.

Yes, perhaps this is not about dissent, but the unintended consequences of the law are showing through, and it clearly shows that the law is not in the best interests of the public. It is a bad law. It is being used in this case to stop the freedom of thought and speech.

Seriously, I hope that this whole mess costs them millions in the end. It is not only despicable, it is against all that is good in humanity. Sure, that sounds like a rant, but WE have to start pushing back now, not later when there is no room to do so. Please everyone stop supporting the AP in any way shape or form. They need to just go the way of buggy whip makers.

No, this is not some plea to get you to support the latest l337 cause. This is a plea to get you to support your constitutional rights. Those of you reading this that are not Americans can also help. Make this company fail. The Brits know that what America does, Britain does at twice the speed and volume (more or less) so it is not an issue for a single country. We all need to speak out about what is wrong, always, as a single voice, whether it is Darfur, London, Washington, or Lisbon etc.

Please

Re:It really doesn't matter....

Drudge Report

This is not the Drudge Report. This is the Drudge *Retort*, a website that typosquats the real Drudge Report URL.

This is simply an attempt to quash competition using the DMCA. A government tool provided for their friends to squash anyone that might dissent.

This would never have happened if the Drudge "Retort" linked to the AP story like the real Drudge Report does.

(The rest of the comment, which panders to emotion and has no real substance or evidence)

'Nuff said.

Washington Post bans the AP

The Washington Post is boycotting the AP over this. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/16/AR2008061600340.html [washingtonpost.com]

Re:Washington Post bans the AP

Although TechCrunch stories do appear on Washington Post, they are not the same and it's just content sharing. http://biz.yahoo.com/iw/080508/0395131.html [yahoo.com]

It is not Fair Use:

TITLE 17 CHAPTER 1 Section 102 (b)
In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work.

and...

International News Service v. Associated Press, 248 U.S. 215 (1918)
...
A news article in a newspaper may be copyrighted under the Act of March 4, 1909, but news, as such, is not copyrightable. P. 248 U. S. 234

As against the public, any special interest of the producer of uncopyrighted news matter is lost upon the first publication. Id.

IANAL, but... isn't this, like, Journalism 101? It was their own damn case, AND THEY WON!!!

Re:It is not Fair Use:

"The news" and a particular presentation of the news are not the same thing. 30-80 words is enough to be a particular presentation.

Whether quoting that much is fair use or not is going to depend on a lot more than just the words quoted themselves. Is the quoting commercial? Done for rebuttal purposes? Source-cited? How much of the total work is the quote?

These are factors that may not be easy to clearly decide except at trial.

Disclaimer: I have not seen the 7 cases cited in this story, so for all I know they could be clearly fair use, clearly not, or up for debate.

Re:I'll say it again.

Some of the DMCA takedowns are user comments on posts that quote other articles. I'm pretty sure that I'm not attempting journalism by posting this comment on slashdot

Re:I'll say it again.

...and a handful of good porn sites...

[Citation needed]
Please?

Re:

Prepare to see "fair-use" to be vindicated

Fair use still exists? K3wl.

Re:kdawson, dupe, again.

"Is the search function really so hard to use?"

Yeah because Slashdot's search function is second only to Google.

Re:what is the deal with "drudge retort"?

The first time I wanted to visit this Drudge site I'd heard about, I punched in the obvious url and ended up at the "retort" instead. Isn't that some kind of copyright violation?

Err... no. Titles are not protected by copyright. URLs are not protected by copyright. Single words are not protected by copyright.

Re:Fair?

Fair use is (1) a legal defence in a copyright violation case, not a right; so (b) whether a snippet counts as infringement is therefore up to a judge (and possibly a jury) rather than being a hard and fast rule.