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Today we discussed the Associated Press‘ decision to issue “guidelines” for bloggers on what consitutes acceptable use of their stories. AP recently sent a C&D to the Drudge Retort, and then backed down. Some blogs, like TechCrunch, have announced a boycott of AP stories until they change their position. We talked about what AP’s bonehead stance would mean for bloggers, and their motivations for taking such an extreme position. What next? The NIAA (Newspaper Industry Association of America) suing children for bootleg papers?
We also talked about Olga Kharif’s story about how the iPhone will impact rivals. A year after it’s introduction, it has completely turned the mobile industry on its head, and now other manufactures and carriers who don’t have access to iphone are scrambling to compete.
On the call: Jeanette Fisher, Daemeon Welch-Abernathy, Dan York, Jim Courtney, Dave Brown, Jeb Brilliant, Ian Hood and Bill Volk.
Alec Saunders is the Vice President of Developer Relations for BlackBerry make Research in Motion. This is his personal blog, with his personal viewpoints. Prior to this Alec was the CEO and co-founder of Calliflower — the easiest way to hold a meeting, online, on a conference call, or on the go. A double-decade veteran of product management and marketing, he spent nine years at Microsoft where he helped launch Windows 95, the first two versions of Internet Explorer, the Universal Plug and Play initiative, the push into home markets, opt-in email marketing and what might well go down in history as the very first direct email list ever.
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I have to love the "gumption" of the AP on this note. There is a wide body of law describing what is and what is not "fair use" under the Copyright Law.
I have a post on my site that describes the basic outline of what the U.S.A. government says is "fair use."
While some blogs do quote whole stories (shame on you…), many simply post quotes from the article and give a link (cite) to the information.
The former is much more likely to fail one of the 4-prongs the courts will look at when determining whether your use is "fair use" while the latter is likely to not fail that prong.
One quote from that government page
Copyright protects the particular way an author has expressed himself; it does not extend to any ideas, systems, or factual information conveyed in the work.
Educate yourselves so that we can all protect our legal rights (yours, mine, the APs…).