Heavy Hand of the AP

Gee Whiz. Get a virus and spend the weekend trying to irradicate the same, and all hell breaks loose.

Apparently the AP has a bee in their bonnet over bloggers using their stuff, and as I understand it from Cernig, they are trying to change the standards of fair use using a very heavy hand, after threatening a blogger

So, while AP is clearly worried by all the negative publicity they have generated by their self-admitted “heavy handed” moves, they want to talk fine but not really address the problem in a substantative way. Instead, they want to dictate a set of “guidelines” enforced by the overhanging threat of legal action.

The AP is trying to change the law, known as Fair Use, much in the same way the music industry’s RIAA has intimidated thousands, and continues to do so, for sharing music — with lawsuits, or threaats of lawsuits. Even more disturbing, to me and many others, is that they are leading the charge to change the standards of Fair Use.

The Associated Press, one of the nation’s largest news organizations, said that it will, for the first time, attempt to define clear standards as to how much of its articles and broadcasts bloggers and Web sites can excerpt without infringing on The A.P.’s copyright.

The A.P.’s effort to impose some guidelines on the free-wheeling blogosphere, where extensive quoting and even copying of entire news articles is common, may offer a prominent definition of the important but vague doctrine of “fair use,” which holds that copyright owners cannot ban others from using small bits of their works under some circumstances. For example, a book reviewer is allowed to quote passages from the work without permission from the publisher.

Well, back at you AP — links to your stories will no longer appear on my pages. Yeah, I know I’m small potatoes to you, but I don’t take kindly to dubious and ambiguous threats. Bloggers and readers should stop by here and sign the petition.