Guide Note

The Associated Press (A.P) is looking to develop guidelines for bloggers who wish to use the news organization's articles on their blogs.

The new guidelines follow an incident where the Associated Press demanded that a blog called the Drudge Retort, take down seven posts featuring excerpts of their wire service stories.

Fast Facts

1. In early June of 2008, The Associated Press demanded the Drudge Retort blog remove posts for copyright violations
2. Threatened legal action
3. Sent Drudge Retort notices of violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)
4. DMCA allows a copyright owner to notify a copyright infringer and request that they take the unauthorized material off the internet
5. The New York Times reported that the AP will define standards as to how bloggers and websites can use excerpts

1. Fair use: part of U.S. copyright law
2. Permits limited use of copyrighted material without permission
3. "Fair use" material might be used to comment on or criticize copyrighted work
4. Based on free speech rights
5. "Fair use" unique to the U.S

1. "The bloggers will also say that this is an ethic the AP itself violates when it homogenizes and commodifies news, rewriting it and stripping it of the identity — and now the address — of the original reporting done by its members and other sources...The AP, for its part, should recognize that they and their members now live in a new media ecology constructed of links, one they do not and cannot control any longer."¹
2. "So here’s our new policy on A.P. stories: they don’t exist. We don’t see them, we don’t quote them, we don’t link to them. They’re banned until they abandon this new strategy, and I encourage others to do the same until they back down from these ridiculous attempts to stop the spread of information around the Internet."²