The Associated Press Cracking Down On Bloggers
I'm guilty of snipping pieces of articles from numerous online news sites and posting on this blog, like most other bloggers in the blogosphere. But I also make sure that I link to the site where the article originated, giving them credit, but I guess that's no longer going to be enough for the 1,500-member newspaper cooperative that own the A.P. - aka the Associated Press. Now they are thinking about possibly charging bloggers for the privilege, and redefining the somewhat ambiguous "fair use" doctrine.
"“Cutting and pasting a lot of content into a blog is not what we want to see,” he said. “It is more consistent with the spirit of the Internet to link to content so people can read the whole thing in context.” Even if The A.P. sets standards, bloggers could choose to use more content than its standards permit, and then The A.P. would have to decide whether to take legal action against them. One important legal test of whether an excerpt exceeds fair use is if it causes financial harm to the copyright owner."
It's always about the Benjamins...
Read the entire article HERE.
Jeez, what a bunch of killjoys! Anyone would think that all AP journalism was actually... well, real journalism!
Anyway, they'll have a hard time policing it. Actually, I'd say that it'll be the bloggers who link to the AP sites that'll get policed rather than those that don't!
Oh well, let's see what they actually come up with to try and curtail internet freedom of information and usage...