AP Serves 7 DMCA Takedowns, Rescinds
Poster: Aron Schatz
Posted on June 17, 2008 at 1:25:00 PM
The AP tried to use DMCA takedown notices to stop quoting of their reports in other sites. The backlash from those notices made them rescind their notices. The AP is really stupid for doing something like this. Most of these "blogs" today are just echoing stories (I'm echoing a story right now!). The AP sometimes changes content so the original information is lost so when people quote the original, it is safe from change. AP needs to sort out this stuff since it is covered under Fair Use... plus all quotes were given with citations.
This is no different from what I just did above.
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I'm currently engaged in a legal disagreement with the Associated Press, which claims that Drudge Retort users linking to its stories are violating its copyright and committing "'hot news' misappropriation under New York state law." An AP attorney filed six Digital Millenium Copyright Act takedown requests this week demanding the removal of blog entries and another for a user comment.
The Retort is a community site comparable in function to Digg, Reddit and Mixx. The 8,500 users of the site contribute blog entries of their own authorship and links to interesting news articles on the web, which appear immediately on the site. None of the six entries challenged by AP, which include two that I posted myself, contains the full text of an AP story or anything close to it. They reproduce short excerpts of the articles -- ranging in length from 33 to 79 words -- and five of the six have a user-created headline.
This is no different from what I just did above.