Last week, the Associated Press sent a letter to the Drudge Retort warning them to take down quotes from AP articles on their website. This caused quite a stir on the blogosphere and several bloggers decided to ban the AP from their websites. The AP then decided to meet with a bloggers group this week to define its rules for using their news stories.
The New York Times reported:
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.Newshoggers says the AP is getting worried.
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.
The Drudge Retort was initially started as a left-leaning parody of the much larger Drudge Report, run by the conservative muckraker Matt Drudge. In recent years, the Drudge Retort has become more of a social news site, similar to sites like Digg, in which members post links to news articles for others to comment on.
But Rogers Cadenhead, the owner of the Drudge Retort and several other Web sites, said the issue goes far beyond one site. “There are millions of people sharing links to news articles on blogs, message boards and sites like Digg. If The A.P. has concerns that go all the way down to one or two sentences of quoting, they need to tell people what they think is legal and where the boundaries are.”
On Friday, The A.P. issued a statement defending its action, saying it was going to challenge blog postings containing excerpts of A.P. articles “when we feel the use is more reproduction than reference, or when others are encouraged to cut and paste.” An A.P. spokesman declined Friday to further explain the association’s position.
After that, however, the news association convened a meeting of its executives at which it decided to suspend its efforts to challenge blogs until it creates a more thoughtful standard.
“We don’t want to cast a pall over the blogosphere by being heavy-handed, so we have to figure out a better and more positive way to do this,” Mr. Kennedy said.
Mr. Kennedy said the company was going to meet with representatives of the Media Bloggers Association, a trade group, and others. He said he hopes that these discussions can all occur this week so that guidelines can be released soon.
Related... Blogger arrests hit a record high this year.
UPDATE: Snapped Shot can relate to what the Drudge Retort is going through.
Do we univerally agree that AP writers are left-wing asshats? We're within our free speech rights to comment and criticize their spew.
ReplyDelete"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"...
ReplyDeleteCharging by the Byte to Curb Internet Traffic
For years, both kinds of Web surfers have paid the same price for access. But now three of the country’s largest Internet service providers are threatening to clamp down on their most active subscribers by placing monthly limits on their online activity.
One of them, Time Warner Cable, began a trial of “Internet metering” in one Texas city early this month, asking customers to select a monthly plan and pay surcharges when they exceed their bandwidth limit. The idea is that people who use the network more heavily should pay more, the way they do for water, electricity, or, in many cases, cellphone minutes.
That same week, Comcast said that it would expand on a strategy it uses to manage Internet traffic: slowing down the connections of the heaviest users, so-called bandwidth hogs, at peak times.
AT&T also said Thursday that limits on heavy use were inevitable and that it was considering pricing based on data volume. “Based on current trends, total bandwidth in the AT&T network will increase by four times over the next three years,” the company said in a statement.
All three companies say that placing caps on broadband use will ensure fair access for all users
...
Nice reasoning and sounds good and factual as far as it goes...
Is there a connection? Those who really use the net, bloggers and their subscribers are the ones who could possibly feel the real hit...
After all who keeps the news media honest in the real world besides the bloggers?
Maybe its merely coincidence, right?
Regarding the spammers, well I'm guessing that more than one person knows something about the following: Combating the zombie army: PCs hijacked by spammers to act as proxy e-mail servers—so-called 'zombie computers'—are the latest threat to ISPs
So capping will do what to the spammers?
Tranformative Fair Use...meet the Associated Press....try not to make a mess.
ReplyDeleteIn reference to the bandwidth providers that are threatening to bill by usage...Two things will result.
1. Some of the smaller companies will grow like wildfire until the larger ones figure out that they just gave away their marketshare....
The second thing to happen is that the blogosphere will go from right and left...to mostly right. Those taking the biggest hit will be students...
The AP, and the providers still don't get it...
Well, if they don't want bloggers quoting them, then they obviously have a problem with free speech and discussion. They don't like that fact that what they write is being put under the microscope, is being scrutinized, and is taking a ride under the bus.
ReplyDeleteCritics of the Associated Press' policies are correct in their assertions, and their watchdog vigilance serves us all well. However, such cyberactivists ought to realize that, to protect open communication, loud public criticism serves them better than a boycott of the very information they are trying to defend.
ReplyDeletehttp://thenerfherder.blogspot.com/2008/06/online-boycott-of-associated-press.html