Dear Jim,
Let me call you Jim as we are kind of informal out here. You can call me alan. We are just folks out here.
(Be advised that my comments and opinions are here are mine,and are directed to you as the Vice President;Director of Strategic Planning,and are not personal attacks.)
The internet lives by the hyperlink. Think about that for a moment. Every bit of information available on the web in any format that you can see on your computer or hand held device has a hyperlinkable address. Without the hyperlink,we would not be having this discussion. That fact alone should let you know that once information hits the web,you no longer have any sort of control over its usage..
I am one of the many people who feel that you are wrong in your use of the DMCA. I thought that I had covered my thoughts sufficiently in my two previous postings.
The Death Rattle of the Associated Press
The Associated Press,Fair Use,Copyright,and the rest of us.
However a story at the New York Times website has compelled my to write again. We will get to that in a few moments. First some background.
Recent events have catapulted you and the organization you work for,the Associated Press,into a highly visible position on the world wide web. Right now this is not a good thing. You have become the news. As your members will tell you,becoming the news compromises your ability to represent the news.
At issue is your organization’s filing a DMCA notice against Rodgers Cadenhead and the Drudge Retort website for Copyright Infringement. This is like using a thermonuclear weapon to clean leaves off your driveway.
The funniest thing here is the way it was done. They cut and pasted,(which may be either scrupulous attention to detail,lazy,or a gigantic infringment as most corporations,most notably in the news and entertainment industries would have the world believe) headlines and excerpts of the articles,providing a Hyperlink to the original story,which gives credit to the source,does provide an accurate,true,and correct quote of the source material.
You should be happy. Everybody else likes links.
These conventions such as Quote,Attribution,Credit and Byline,have been adopted from the news business because they are an elegant and fair method of establishing authorship,exchanging information,giving credit,and work to eliminate confusion between what was said,and what is being debated,or commented upon. So not every thing the news business is doing is bad.
This is pretty much the way most folks point to material for commentary. Also,in the case of weblogs,allows readers to read the materials we used to form our opinions and either agree with us or tell us we are full of crap.There really is no malice or a gigantic conspiracy on the part of the millions of folks who publish on the web. It is hard to get any group of any size moving in the same direction. Herding cats is easier.
You have succeeded however.
As you are discovering,folks out here are opposed to your action. The backlash that you are currently feeling is only the tip of the electronic iceberg. What the folks on the Drudge Retort site did was Fair Use as I have come to understand and use it.
Attempting to tell millions of bloggers how and what they can do especially regarding Fair Use and Freedom of Speech is doomed.
I don’t feel that you are fully understanding the arena that you are playing in. While you were using teletypes to broadcast your ‘content’to your 1500 members,we were building a network unlike anything the world has seen,with over 100 Million members worldwide. I may be low on the figure on our end. Maybe you should have stuck with the teletypes.
The internet is an expanding series of computers,using open protocols,to exchange information. The visible portion you are seeing is the world wide web. It is a messy place filled with words,sounds,pictures and video. We are no longer passive consumers of filtered,homogenized,spoonfed,broadcasted information. We are creators,producers,and commenter’s of information,news,and opinion.
The internet is not just a cheap pipe for you to service your membership with your output.
You have two problems to overcome.
The first problem is your business model. You collect news and information,from individual reporters,homogenize it,stripping individual credit,rewriting it,and then sell it back to your members requiring your AP byline. Which in the days before the web was a cost effective model for smaller newspapers to inform their readers about world and local events.
However with the vast amount of individual reporting on events that can be uploaded to the web in moments,the ability to hyperlink that information,so that reader/viewership numbers far outstrip any dead tree or broadcast numbers you could possibly hope for,makes your relevance problematical. The most significant fact to understand is the vast majority is created on those computers by individuals. This material is known in the news industry by the pejorative term “user generated content.”
It is not a question of veracity or professionalism,it is a question of speed,and depth.
The second problem is attempting to control its dissemination once it shows up on the web. The current boycott postings should give you an inkling of just how fast folks can spread the word.
As you can see by the postings that are the subject of this lunacy,the speed at which things can be linked and discussed should make your nose bleed and your head hurt. Right now these folks are just boycotting AP Bylined stories. What should strike terror into your heart is when they expand it to include your 1500 members. Your members are already gasping for air,as their revenue streams are drying up,circulation is diminishing,and folks are getting their news from thousand of alternative news outlets. As more and more newspapers on the web open themselves up to reader contributions,your role will diminish.
Cheaper too,as most of us do not count ‘value’in dollars and cents.
Now to your latest faux pas.
In a story on the New York Times website titled:
The Associated Press to Set Guidelines for Using Its Articles in Blogs
there were number of quotes that you made that require commentary:
According to the story:
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.
Gee Jim! that horse has not only left the barn but has traveled around the world. Any ‘standard’you create is going to be problematic as your organization has no business or right to define Fair Use,for anyone you do not have a contractual relationship with,whom if I am close to correct,has the ability to post the entire thing,which is what you are selling. That being said,your thinking that you are going to release ‘thoughtful standards’that will apply to the individuals on the web is disengeous,arrogant,and doomed to failure.
Right now like the movie Untraceable,you are hanging upside down above the roto tiller,but there is no pole to save you as more and more folks log on and the cable continues its inexorable downward path.
You then went on to say:
“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.
Since you are charging for it,it had better. Your job depends on that. And getting your members to believe that and keep those checks coming. However,that value is not measured in dollars and cents
out here. Today it may be ‘hot news’,but tomorrow it will line bird cages or wrap fish.
Also from the story is this:
One important legal test of whether an excerpt exceeds fair use is if it causes financial harm to the copyright owner.
You have already been paid for it at least once. It will be real hard to make a case for financial harm on that basis alone,irregardless of what percentage of a piece turns out to cross the Fair Use threshold,which at this point in time is decided on a case by case basis,requiring court action. Good Luck with that.
The final comment in the story attributed to you:
“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.”
Actually,Jim you are. At the very least you are implying that we are thieves with your current interpretation of Fair Use,just like the RIAA and the MPAA.
So you can either step back and re-examine your policy,or you can hire a bunch of lawyers. Because we will hold bake sales,yard sales and tip jars,to fight this.
Your electronic pen pal
alan herrell –the head lemur
P.S. You need to double Irene Keselman’s salary,because anybody who can pull a rabbit like “Hot News Missapropriation”out of a hat,will get snatched up by some Intellectual Property Law Firm inside of 6 months tops.