Daily Debrief: Blogs infringe on AP's copyright Video

Daily Debrief: Blogs infringe on AP's copyright Video Transcript

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>> It comes to the blogosphere and linking, that's like, love and marriage or maybe not because you might need a judge to decide this entire issue at the end of the day. My name is Charlie Cooper, I'm here with News dot coms Dan Farber and Dan we've got a bit of a kerfuffle in the blogosphere. The Associated Press has attempted to deal with a blogger, the person who is in charge of the Drudge Retort. Take down notices for linking to and reproducing snippets from AP dispatches. What's behind this now?

>> You know the AP, the Associated Press is a vendible news organization and I think they're feeling the pinch from the blogosphere which is to say that, the basic method in which blogs and other types of content work on the web is that you find content on the web and you pretentiously link to it as a source or you can excerpt a piece of it using, I guess what's generally called fair use. Now, fair use is very fuzzy and hard to define, but I think the AP is contending that fair use is being abused by the blogosphere and in this case the Drudge Retort.

>> And you rightly mention there is fuzzy line. I'm not whether or not courts have wade in as far as fair use any internet. Is it more or less an issue of net etiquette?

>> No, it's much more fundamental. It's not really just the blogosphere, this goes on way before from the beginning of print, which is reuse of material. And Timothy Wu who is a law professor at Columbia University was quoted in a New York Times article by Saul Hansel giving you the link there. Was saying if the, what was reproduced was a substitute for the story, then there is a case to the made, but it's very hard to say that an expert from a story is going to be a substitute for the story and there's no story that is original. For example, you could say, well if you're the AP you should be citing the sources by, from which you got that story because, you know, original reporting is built on top antecedent material and therefore should be linked to that. So it becomes kind of ridiculous. I think the point is that fair use is fuzzy and that the web is what we call a refactory. Meaning that every article can take pieces and snippets and links from other articles and use it to fabricate a new article that adds some value hopefully.

>> And this is something old media never had to deal with pre-internet. This is something that has grown up over the last few years.

>> It's grown up over the last few years in the web, but it's also as a said, it started with the printing press where someone could say, could take a piece written in another article and use that piece to generate a further article. And now it's becoming expediently more intense, simply because so much raw material is available. So many people have the tools to become a publisher that if you are the AP and you view yourself as an originator of content then you feel that, that your content is being abused by those who take it and use it for their own purposes and potentially generate revenue for it. That's just the way the web and there is something that common sense would tell you is fair use.

>> And when this issue broke last week, Jim Kennedy who was the AP executive in charge of this seem to be looking out for, to bring home a scalp. But in the piece that you mentioned in the New York Times is backing off a bit.

>> I think he is backing off, but I think as many people I've talked to have said, they listen to their lawyers too much. And as a result they have gotten the ire of the blogosphere, which is not something you would really want to the do because it's really hard to win that fight.

>> Big time.

>> And so I think that they will back off and from what they said they would do is they're going to meet the Media Bloggers Association, try to come to some understanding or come up with some guidelines, but I don't think they'll come up with any better guidelines then what we have today.

>> Even if they meet with this association, what's it going to mean in fact because the blogosphere is free willing and there really is no governing association that can really enforce discipline.

>> Well I don't think it's about having a governing organization to enforce discipline but general guidelines are okay and the general guidelines are pretty much well known. We've been doing this for about 10 or 15 years now. And I think it's also very self-regulating that those sources sites like ours or others who have some influence and have been around, you know can make sure we are policing each other.

>> Thanks Dan. For CNET News dot com, I'm Charlie Cooper. ^M00:04:46 [ Music ]