The RIAA doesn’t get the whole Internet thing yet. The Movie Industry doesn’t get the whole Internet Thing yet. So I guess the CEO of AP, Associated Press shouldn’t feel bad that he doesn’t understand it either.

AP CEO Declares War On Internet
Submitted by David A. Utter to WebProNews on Fri, 12/07/2007 - 06:26

“If you want our content, we expect to be paid for it … this nonsense that you can just take the first paragraph or use the picture small doesn’t really fly with us. People die trying to take those pictures,” Curley said in the report.

Soldiers die in wars and the AP makes money on the pictures they take and the money they make from that as well. When they cover a murder, they sell that news to organizations and don’t compensate the family of the person that died.

Fair use remains the topic that never seems to come up in the discussion of using content others have created. Doctrines of fair use allow for “any copying of copyrighted material done for a limited and ‘transformative’ purpose such as to comment upon, criticize or parody a copyrighted work,” according to Stanford University’s Copyright & Fair Use Center.

Just as I am doing in this blog post. It’s legal and it’s fair use.

This leaves the issue open for people like Curley and a deep-pocketed organization to force a definition of fair use by litigating against anyone who tries to reuse their content.

Exactly. The CEO of AP says “people die to take those pictures”. That is not what this is about. It’s about a greedy corporation trying to litigate against smaller entities to force them from doing what is legal.

It’s no different than when the RIAA tries to say they are suing people to protect the artists. It’s to help big record companies continue to profit on the backs of the artists so they can continue to be the only ones allowed to screw the artists over.

Maybe the AP should just merge with the RIAA.

Rich Ord wrote an article awhile back that slammed the AP and essentially said they’d never survive the rise of the Internet. I disagreed. I thought the AP might survive if they undertook the policy of the rest of the online community and embraced information sharing as a new business model. It seems they are not willing to do that. They still think they can control the news the rest of us read. They’re wrong. And I give them 20 years before they die. Goodbye AP. We’ll miss you.

I swear the people who now hold the field service accounts (laughing) were never around in the ASCII days of the net. I sure remember it and finding a lot of backdoors. USA Today even had their paper available online for FREE in TeXT format every day if you knew what number to dialup locally.

The only people I care to protect for pictures are the photographers. Not the media outlets, or publishers for publishing industry. The talent doesn’t get paid very much, not to mention their investment in gear.

RIAA (that topic) is worse than the school bully. They are almost equal to the Chicago Boys in the 20’s and 30’s with the City supporting them. RIAA has laws slanted in their favor, and can make arrests if they suspect wrongdoings while having no proof beforehand. It is up to the ones charged to prove they are not guilty.

I agree, IF it were about the photgraphers. It’s about the corporate bottom line and fear of the Internet cutting into profits.

As long as you credit the source and only quote a small portion of the story, it’s fair use. Providing a link back is a courtesy and should also be done.

You can quote the entire article and comment on it or criticize it or make fun of it paragraph by paragraph and it is still fair use. They may not like it but too bad.

I have a humor blog and I plan to start using articles from the AP and make fun of them. A parody makes it legal to do so. So all they have accomplished with me is that I will quote them more often from now on.

[...] A story on the News And Media Blog inspired this completely unreliable news story. Who Let The Blog Out?   [...]

[...] When I posted before about the associated press and their idiotic view of the Internet I was quoting from where they say you cannot even use one paragraph of text or a small version of one of their pictures. They claim that even if you attribute the source, it’s a violation of their copyright. [...]