Back to front page » June 20, 2008, 4:29 pm The A.P. Asserts Tough (and Still Secret) View of Copyright on Blogs By Saul Hansell The Associated Press has punted on its commitment to clarify how much text it thinks bloggers and social news sites can reprint from its articles without violating The AP’s copyright. Indeed, the giant news organization appears to be insisting that bloggers cannot quote the headline of an A.P. story or its first paragraph. While the law is not settled, many lawyers suggest that such short excerpts are permitted under the “fair use” exception to the copyright laws. The issue came up after The A.P. — a not for profit group of 1,500 newspapers, including The New York Times — demanded that the Drudge Retort remove 10 posts that quoted between 40 and 80 words of its articles. After a storm of protest, The A.P. backed down and said it had been too heavy-handed in its initial complaint. It added that it hoped to publish guidance for bloggers suggesting how they can use A.P. content. On Thursday night, The A.P. published a statement saying that it had reached an accord with Rogers Cadenhead, the owner of the Drudge Retort (a parody of the better known Drudge Report): “Both parties consider the matter closed.” There was no word on any guidelines for other sites. The full A.P. statement didn’t offer any relevant facts and was so convoluted that it’s hard to imagine anyone writing that way could get hired as a reporter at The A.P.: In response to questions about the use of Associated Press content on the Drudge Retort web site, the AP was able to provide additional information to the operator of the site, Rogers Cadenhead, on Thursday. That information was aimed at enabling Mr. Cadenhead to bring the contributed content on his site into conformance with the policy he earlier set for his contributors. Both parties consider the matter closed. In addition, the AP has had a constructive exchange of views this week with a number of interested parties in the blogging community about the relationship between news providers and bloggers and that dialogue will continue. The resolution of this matter illustrates that the interests of bloggers can be served while still respecting the intellectual property rights of news providers. Paul Colford, the A.P. director of media relations, declined to discuss the matter at all. He said that Tom Curley, The A.P.’s chief executive, would also not discuss the matter, nor would anyone else at the organization. Mr. Cadenhead, did publish a post on his blog about the matter. And Robert Cox, the president of the Media Bloggers Association, a group that helped Mr. Cadenhead negotiate with The A.P ., also offered his take. I spoke to both of them earlier today. Here’s what seems to have happened: On Thursday night, The A.P.’s lawyers spent two hours on the telephone with Mr. Cadenhead going over their objections to each of the items. There was not one of them, Mr. Cadenhead told me, that was acceptable in its original format. The A.P. said that if Mr. Cadenhead made certain changes, it would withdraw its demand that the posts be removed from his site. Mr. Cadenhead told me that upon reflection he decided not to repost the modified items. But he figured he would take The A.P.’s standards into account for future posts that link to its articles. His main goal, he said, was to avoid a protracted legal battle. Mr. Cadenhead declined to tell me exactly what The A.P. wanted changed. He did say that one key issue is the A.P. wants to protect the headline and first paragraph of its articles. He suggested that this will put The Associated Press in direct conflict with bloggers. “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,” Mr. Cadenhead wrote on his blog. Although The A.P. wouldn’t talk to me, several people I interviewed who have spoken to A.P. executives this week said the organization appears to be internally conflicted and has not yet been able to come up with a clear fair-use position. But unless something changes, Mr. Cadenhead’s experience indicates that The A.P. is going to assert a much stricter interpretation of fair use than most people on the Internet are used to. That will present bloggers and social news sites with a dilemma: If they chose to quote The A.P. as they’ve been doing, they are risking getting into a legal fight that well could cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars. Mr. Cox said that there were organizations willing to help Mr. Cadenhead with the legal bills. However, the unsettled state of the law makes it a gamble to take the matter to court. “For the blogosphere in general, there is a risk The A.P. could win that case, and therefore set a precedent that no blogger would want set,” Mr. Cox said.