Patterico's Pontifications

6/18/2008

Bloggers, If You Really Want to Punish the AP . . .

Filed under: Blogging Matters — Patterico @ 6:33 am



Don’t refuse to quote them.

Just don’t link them.

There’s no law that says you have to link what you quote. Just use a quote that fits within fair use, do your commentary, and deny them the link.

Me, I’m going to keep on doing what I’ve been doing. I think it’s good to give people the chance to read quotes in context. So I’m pretty much just going to ignore this little campaign on the part of the AP to frighten bloggers out of relying on the concept of fair use.

But if you’re bound and determined to punish them, just don’t send any traffic their way. That’s all.

19 Responses to “Bloggers, If You Really Want to Punish the AP . . .”

  1. I don’t want to punish them. I want them to reform and be an honest source of information.

    PCD (5c49b0) — 6/18/2008 @ 6:54 am

  2. Actually, if you want to hit them hard a campaign to file DMCA takedown notices everytime they quote or refer to a blog post ought to do the trick.

    George (9a8a77) — 6/18/2008 @ 7:12 am

  3. I also like the idea at Jawa Report of creating a story that sources only the AP just as the AP does when they choose to wholesale copy a story from Reuters or AFP.

    w3 (5b8906) — 6/18/2008 @ 8:00 am

  4. Reuters often carries the same or similar stuff. Paraphrase AP then link to Reuters.

    BlacquesJacquesShellacques (5a5f1c) — 6/18/2008 @ 8:03 am

  5. I understand that Michelle Malkin is sending a six-figure bill to AP for pulling quotes and notes from her blog!. LOL!!

    John425 (eae6ea) — 6/18/2008 @ 8:09 am

  6. Is the AP ever a reliable source?

    Dreadnaught (4f2403) — 6/18/2008 @ 8:10 am

  7. Dreadnaught,

    The local rag’s editor, who is also head of the Iowa Newspaper Editor’s Assn., thinks the AP is God and faultless.

    PCD (5c49b0) — 6/18/2008 @ 8:29 am

  8. Or link using an indirection service, such as http://www.tinyurl.com – if you do this, you get the best of both worlds. They can’t back track and you can still link. Even better, if everyone uses the same indirection service – such as tiny url – even Technorati would continue to work.

    Hal (043cb4) — 6/18/2008 @ 8:43 am

  9. PCD, how do you reform something that’s rotten to the core?

    http://www.hyscience.com/archives/bilal005.jpg

    Roy Mustang (1641ac) — 6/18/2008 @ 9:12 am

  10. I’m with George. The DMCA takedown requirements have the internet providers antsy, they don’t want to end up litigating anything – so a complaint leads to pulled content.

    Al (b624ac) — 6/18/2008 @ 9:14 am

  11. DRJ’ s posts are sorely missed. This election season is lacking without her coverage.

    Vermont Neighbor (2464ca) — 6/18/2008 @ 9:32 am

  12. Exactly, Al. A single AP story with an offending section could lead to hundreds of DMCA takedown actions.

    George (afe374) — 6/18/2008 @ 11:45 am

  13. Roy, 9, the only cure is to clean house. Remember Dukakis’ favorite saying? The fish stinks from the head. So does the AP.

    PCD (5c49b0) — 6/18/2008 @ 11:48 am

  14. I have no intentions to link any AP stories. It is a bit silly on AP part to start first threaten bloggers, then make a decision to play nice and to “educate” bloggers on AP copyright use, and then want to charge bloggers for 5 words. There is a big difference between working together with bloggers for a common purpose of truth reporting versus this silly cat and mouse game of who is stealing what story or words from AP. I just see soon more and more of a shift readers of newspapers and TV to blogsites. The world of journalism needs a major cleanup.

    SP Biloxi (c9f64e) — 6/18/2008 @ 3:12 pm

  15. This blog entry by Robert Cox is interesting.

    DRJ (8b9d41) — 6/18/2008 @ 4:03 pm

  16. I make up stories and source them to AP all the time:

    http://www.imao.us/archives/cat_newsish_fakery.html

    Harvey (80611a) — 6/18/2008 @ 6:26 pm

  17. omg…

    That is my new favorite site…

    Scott Jacobs (d3a6ec) — 6/18/2008 @ 6:33 pm

  18. If I’m not going to link to AP, there’s no reason to even acknowledge AP; words can be put together in multitudes of ways to say basically the same things 🙂

    Lord Nazh (899dce) — 6/18/2008 @ 7:45 pm

  19. Also if you look little further, most AP articles have other sources, like small town news papers, scientific organization, etc. I usually try to find the source since AP managed to slurp itself. I stopped quoting or referring to them but thank you for the idea.
    Now if I can’t find the source, I will quote them but not link!

    Diordna (294a0c) — 7/18/2008 @ 9:42 pm


Powered by WordPress.

Page loaded in: 0.0906 secs.