Quote of the day, 6/17
Markos, on the Associated Press briefly threatening bloggers who reproduce AP stories:
Lots of blogs are calling for boycotts of AP content. Not me. I’m going to keep using it. I will copy and paste as many words as I feel necessary to make my points and that I feel are within bounds of copyright law (and remember, I’ve got a JD and specialized in media law, so I know the rules pretty well). And I will keep doing so if I get an AP takedown notice (which I will make a big public show of ignoring). And then, either the AP — an organization famous for taking its members work without credit — will either back down and shut the hell up, or we’ll have a judge resolve the easiest question of law in the history of copyright jurisprudence.
I guess I’ll keep citing the AP as appropriate here as well.
Stumble it!
Tags: Associated Press, blogiverse, media
June 17th, 2008 at 8:58 pm
Markos allows blocks of quotes that are far longer than appropriate. But at least he frequently provides links to the original copy. (Though too often, he provides a link to another blogger, as if it was their story rather than AP’s.)
Some bloggers seem to think that ensuring that news organizations will not exist in the future is the goal. There will be virtually nothing worth reading in blogs if the paid media cease to exist. We’ll all sit around reading how Jesus’s General making fun of Markos’s take on Atrios’s beliefs about, well, like the Seinfeld show, about nothing. Because everything they do rests on the shoulders of paid media.
Josh Marshall’s is about the only liberal blog that does any reporting.
Yet somebody wants to boycott AP because they’d have to do the work of paraphrasing and then provide links??? What a bunch of friggin’ crybabies!!
June 18th, 2008 at 5:30 am
“Yet somebody wants to boycott AP because they’d have to do the work of paraphrasing and then provide links??? What a bunch of friggin’ crybabies!!”
I think the point here, rather transparently, is that the phrase “they’d have to” is obviously incorrect in this context. It won’t be that much more work for anyone, sure. It also wouldn’t be much more work for me if I stop using the word “blancmange” in blog posts; the point is the AP doesn’t get to arbitrarily tell me that that’s what I have to start doing.
June 18th, 2008 at 9:01 am
I find just cutting large tracks out of a story pretty pointless. As Ryan points out, most of us don’t do any serious reporting – we’re just non-corporate whore pundits who put our alternative stank on the news stories du jour. So if our value add is opinion (such as it is), it would make sense that we would actually *read* an article, summarize the key points, add a pithy block quote or two, then link to the real source, so the reader can form their own opinion (and judge the quality of our bloviating for his/herself).
Now I’ll readily admit we get a bit lazy around here on NN with giving full attributes to pics and stuff, what with full-time jobs and all, but it wouldn’t be that much work to do a complete attribution.