Want to quote 5-25 words from an AP story? That’ll be $12.50. ($7.50 for non-profit or educational use.) The AP has published a form that details the cost of an “Excerpt for Web Use” license.
The AP has a right to discourage people from posting the full content of articles online, just as you or I retain the copyright to our own writing (unless we explicitly give those rights away). But to charge money even for brief quotations is to reject the Section 107 of the Copyright Act — known as the “Fair Use Exception.”
§ 107. Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use
Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include–
(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.
Note that copying an entire book (or song, or movie) in order to avoid purchasing it is not “fair use.” Showing a clip from a movie in class, or posting quotations from a novel to back up a review or literary research paper, are all covered by “fair use.”
Access to the words of public officials, as reported from various news sources, is an important part of the democratic process. A candidate being interviewed on ABC should be able to quote from what an opponent said on NBC, and someone who calls in on a CBS show should be able to quote from what a guest said on CNN. The Fair Use Exception recognizes that anyone engaging in “criticism” or “comment” should have the ability to quote brief passages from published materials.
Yes, that’s a good assessment. I’m sure the AP organization itself is full of people who “get” the internet, but any company that does business under the name “icopyright” is obviously targeting content creators, rather than the consumers who constitute the audience for that content.
Good reference…silly old media! I do think that meeting of the minds referenced in the article is a good thing — the more cross-media talk that happens, the better — otherwise, there will be a perpetual power struggle so long as money is involved. I’ve spotted a lot of chatter about this topic in the blogosphere since you’ve posted it, so you’re certainly not alone in feeling worried.
I noticed that there’s that little “click here for copyright permissions” logo at the bottom of the Wired article you referenced — again, a link to icopyright.com — http://info.icopyright.com/ — which seems to be a profit-based alternative to the Creative Commons licensing approach. That’s really where the power struggle seems to lie to me: who controls the license?
Update: “The Associated Press, following…”
(That’s all I can quote from the article for free, since it’s published by the AP.)
In all fairness, the AP does offer the ability to:
But that solution still doesn’t let me quote a passage in the context of an analysis or discussion (such as this comment) that will become part of a blogger’s permanent archive.
Are they going to expend the resources tracking down every blogger who quotes their work? No, but bloggers are upset because the AP seems poised to target sites that quote from the AP in order to critique the AP itself, and that sets a dangerous precedent.
I see it as another desperate, misguided attempt by Old Media to control New Media. It won’t have that much effect. Many of the AP stories have already been published first in whatever newspaper sold the story to the AP, so it might take a bit more effort to find the original publication.
Thanks for pointing out the NYT article. Important stuff to watch out for. Do you really think their policy really has any teeth, though?
Mike, recently the AP sent a takedown notice to the Drudge Retort (a parody of/rebuttal to the Drudge Report)…
and then defended its actions:
By announcing its intention to charge for *any* excerpt of five or more words, regardless of the size of the piece from which the excerpt comes, and by specifically targeting bloggers, many of whom have a perfectly legitimate claim to be publishing criticism and comment, the AP is challenging the very concept of fair use in the blogosphere.
Intriguing stuff. Clicking around there, it seems that the AP has just farmed out the whole matter to a service called “icopyright”: http://icopyright.blogspot.com/2008/04/icopyright-provides-article-tools-for.html I think it’s really intended more for reprints than “fair use” quotation, but the line between the two can be fuzzy (i.e., quoting a whole haiku or something small like that, which is probably why they put a charge on the very short word count figure).