RSSAP sends anti-Drudge blogger a DMCA takedown notice
By Tim Conneally | Published June 13, 2008, 1:48 PM
On June 10, the Associated Press sent Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown orders to Rogers Cadenhead's site The Drudge Retort for seven different articles the news service claims violated copyright.
Drudge Retort is painted as a liberal alternative to the Drudge Report and receives editorial content from about 25 writers. The Associated Press found six instances of bloggers recycling AP copyrighted material, and one instance of a commenter doing the same.
The disputed content ranges from selections 32 to 79 words in length taken from Associated Press stories published by Yahoo News, USA Today, the Chicago Tribune, and the Houston Chronicle. The disputed user comment contains 83 words from, as well as a link to, an AP story published by Fox News.
The Associated Press' Intellectual Property Governance Coordinator Irene Keselmen sent a missive to Cadenhead containing the passage: "I have a good faith belief that the page or material listed below is not authorized by law for use by the individual(s) associated with the identified page listed below or their agents and therefore infringes the copyright owner's rights. I HEREBY DEMAND THAT YOU ACT EXPEDITIOUSLY TO REMOVE OR DISABLE ACCESS TO THE PAGE OR MATERIAL CLAIMED TO BE INFRINGING."
In Cadenhead's Workbench blog, he details the content which the Associated Press found objectionable:
Similar lawsuits have been filed by the AP two other times in the recent past. The first was against Verisign subsidiary Moreover Technologies for reproducing and aggregating copyrighted AP content, and another was against All Headline News Corp. in January, when it accused the Florida-based news service of copying AP stories from sites that legitimately carry them and redistributing them as a service of its own.
Cadenhead says he had only linked to AP stories with brief synopses of content for purposes of discussion, similar to an abstract. The Associated Press feels that the unlicensed use of a headline and story lede is both a copyright infringement and a "hot news" misappropriation.
I find it interesting that every recent case of journalistic plagiarism or falsification seems linked to a strongly liberal source. Not sure what to make of it, though. AP itself is a left-of-center wire service.
Score: 0
|Yep, so much for FREE SPEECH and that First Amendment. I know of another "private" website; where the posters are AFRAID to make negative comments about the RIAA or a certain record company. They'll use an antist's trademarked logos as personal avatars, which should have invited legal action rom their label months ago. Don't you dare call them a bunch of weasels though...
Score: 0
|Yep, so much for FREE SPEECH and that First Amendment.
Ignorant -1.
Do our schools no longer teach this stuff?
"Free Speech" inasfar as the first amendment goes pertains to the *GOVERNMENT* denial of speech *only*. It has *nothing* to do with fair-use, copyright, or personal speech in private businesses.
Read it.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. "This has nothing to do with it. This is between a business and an individual, and relates more to Fair Use than Free speech.
I'd tell you to shut up until you know what your talking about, but you'd probably think I was abusing your "right" to "free speech". ;)
Score: 0
|Wow Free speech look out... Personally on this one issue I couldn't care less. but the concept of them telling him he cant compare and contrast public statement... As long as he give adequate credit to the source (a link should suffice) I have no problem with this kind of free speech... Obviously they do...
Wow who would have thought that???
/Sarcasm off...
Score: 0
|The AP's head honcho of "Strategy" Jim Kennedy has said in relation to this issue: "The Associated Press encourages the engagement of bloggers -- large and small -- in the news conversation of the day. Some of the largest blogs are licensed to display AP stories in full on a regular basis. We genuinely value and encourage referring links to our coverage, and even offer RSS feeds from www.ap.org, as do many of our licensed customers."
-------
I think the unsaid meaning here is bloggers are free to particpate in the news conversation of the day as long as you pay the AP. It's pretty clear from recent lawsuits that the Associated Press feels entitled to own the news. The AP has enjoyed a monopoly for probably much too long I fear.
The facts of the news are in the Public Domain the facts of the news are Publici juris and no business may own the rights to fact not even the AP.
It is also clear that the AP has made the "Strategic" decision to use the faulty and nebulous doctrine of Hot News misappropriation as web 2.0, the internet and modern communications threaten their very existence.
Score: 0
|Well, I guess this makes for an interesting fair use case. Can you use a short excerpt to engage a discussion, or does the discussion have to exist when the excerpt is published?
It might be the case that if your news is solely an excerpt of anothers work for the purposes of generating traffic and _hopefully later_ also a discussion, that it might not be fair use.
Not sure what Drudge is doing, I don't read that site.
Score: 0
|I always thought that site was a cheap and poorly ran site.
I still don't get why Drudge doesnt put target="_blank"
Score: 0
|Off topic, but concerning the "I still don't get why Drudge doesnt put target="_blank" statement, you're right, why would Drudge have all his linked stories leave his site entirely? I for one would rather have a new window open rather than repeatedly having to hit the 'Back' button. Although I'd much rather have a new tab than a new window.
Score: 0
|Here on XP SP2 with a scroll wheel/three button
mouse (scroll wheel is 3rd button) and Firefox,
I just middle click the headline to open it in a
background tab. This also works in Opera.
In IE 6 s***+click for a new window.
Right now, I have 59 tabs open.
Score: 0
|