June 20, 2008

Are We Headed For a Napster-Like Battle Between Blogs and the AP?

The AP has settled its legal dispute with The Drudge Retort, but Rodgers Cadenhead, proprietor of that social-network news site, says the larger issue of bloggers using the AP's copyrighted content, is unsettled and "headed for a Napster-style battle on the issue of fair use."

Update: Robert Cox has the backstory from inside the AP/Drudge Retort conflict. Now, read the rest of the post...

Cadenhead writes:

If AP's guidelines end up like the ones they shared with me, we're headed for a Napster-style battle on the issue of fair use.

When it appeared that I might end up in court on this issue, I got offers of help from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Public Citizen and the Stanford Fair Use Project. My attorney Wade Duchene and I were already working up the victory speech to deliver on the steps of the Supreme Court in the landmark First Amendment decision AP v. Me...

I think AP and other media organizations should focus on how to encourage bloggers to link their stories in the manner they like, rather than hoping their lawyers can rebottle the genie of social news. Given the publicity of this dispute, the first blogger sued for excerpting a news story will have the best pro bono legal representation that massive press attention can buy.

Although AP will be releasing guidelines, I don't think the news service will be able to concede any ground to the blogosphere. AP sells headline and lead-only services to customers. Asking the company to concede there's a way people can share this information for free is like asking the RIAA to pick its favorite file-sharing client.

If an expansive view of fair use is to remain in place, it's incumbent upon bloggers and our $500-an-hour friends in the legal community to define our own guidelines and fight for them. If we don't, big media companies will eventually define them for us, just as they've gotten the Digital Millenium Copyright Act and Copyright Term Extension Act passed in Congress.

The AP is really both businesses. It does original reporting. As long as it does that well, that part of its business should do alright. But repacking the news is a middleman function that the web and the blogosphere are fast rendering obsolete.

Hat tip: Terry Heaton