There's a bit of an uproar in the blog world right now about some recent legal maneuvers on the part of the Associated Press. The AP holds blogs are infringing copyright when quoting news stories. Bloggers are crying foul, saying such use falls under long honored copyright allowances.
So who's right? I'm not the one to answer that (I'm a librarian, not a lawyer, Jim).
I will say this, though. On the one hand it's a little ironic that the AP is doing this. It frequently quotes other sources of material, for example, including blogs.
But copyright's a tricky thing in this digital age. Distributors of digital media successfully convinced legislators to hold their media to a stricter standard. Witness the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which, among other things, prohibits a person from breaking the digital rights management on an item he or she owns (sounds innocent, but consider that it could prevent you from watching, say, your DVD on your own computer) and also allows companies to hold people to use agreements they "consent" to merely by opening a package (to read said agreement, for instance). In other words, electronic copyright is much more of a gray area than print, and unlikely, when legislators refer to the Internet as plumbing, to improve anytime soon.
I should also mention, however, that as a former journalist I do see where the AP is coming from. Huge numbers of blogs basically repeat stories written by reporters, then crow about how "old media" is irrelevant. It's kind of a parasitic relationship that has had a very real effect on newsrooms, which are shrinking -- or outright closing -- across the country at an alarming rate. Until blogs start supporting investigative staff, not simply weighing in on what other people dig up -- the blogging world does actually need agencies like the AP to remain healthy.
Here's a news story about the whole brouhaha, as reported, of course, by the AP. One important thing to note is that the agency the AP is negotiating with, the Media Bloggers Association, is far from a representative entity. Actually, it's one guy, a right-wing pundit named Robert Cox. The fact that the AP is reporting the negotiations as representative of interested parties is quite telling about its motivations.
It'll be interesting to see how this shakes out.
So who's right? I'm not the one to answer that (I'm a librarian, not a lawyer, Jim).
I will say this, though. On the one hand it's a little ironic that the AP is doing this. It frequently quotes other sources of material, for example, including blogs.
But copyright's a tricky thing in this digital age. Distributors of digital media successfully convinced legislators to hold their media to a stricter standard. Witness the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which, among other things, prohibits a person from breaking the digital rights management on an item he or she owns (sounds innocent, but consider that it could prevent you from watching, say, your DVD on your own computer) and also allows companies to hold people to use agreements they "consent" to merely by opening a package (to read said agreement, for instance). In other words, electronic copyright is much more of a gray area than print, and unlikely, when legislators refer to the Internet as plumbing, to improve anytime soon.
I should also mention, however, that as a former journalist I do see where the AP is coming from. Huge numbers of blogs basically repeat stories written by reporters, then crow about how "old media" is irrelevant. It's kind of a parasitic relationship that has had a very real effect on newsrooms, which are shrinking -- or outright closing -- across the country at an alarming rate. Until blogs start supporting investigative staff, not simply weighing in on what other people dig up -- the blogging world does actually need agencies like the AP to remain healthy.
Here's a news story about the whole brouhaha, as reported, of course, by the AP. One important thing to note is that the agency the AP is negotiating with, the Media Bloggers Association, is far from a representative entity. Actually, it's one guy, a right-wing pundit named Robert Cox. The fact that the AP is reporting the negotiations as representative of interested parties is quite telling about its motivations.
It'll be interesting to see how this shakes out.
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