Webloggin » AP Files DMCA Suit Against Liberal Blog for Linking and Excerpting Reports On Site

The Associated Press has launched a DMCA suit against a liberal blog called the Drudge Retort for linking up AP articles with short excerpts.

The site mimics the conservative oriented Drudge Report with a decidedly liberal spin. (the left is so original).

Regardless of what you think about the site however the AP is filing suit for doing something that bloggers do everyday by excerpting, linking and commenting on a news story or other internet posting that is found published in cyberspace. This is the way the blogosphere works in large fashion and is an example of how entities such as the AP will pervert the DMCA to their advantage in the face of criticism.

Among the many challenges the AP is making under DMCA is the practice of excerpting articles for comment. The suit even challenges individual user comments that contain excerpts. This has very large ramifications for the blogosphere.

DMCA has come under intense criticism as it is wielded like a heavy sword in a large number of fair use cases on YouTube, in magazines, in music and video, in over reaching copyright protection that stifles legitimate uses (assumes that you will use technology illegally) and even by locking cell phones to specific carriers.

Worse, internet service provides and site administrators are forced to remove content while the challenge is pending.

Gawker, a site that I agree with, well almost never, gets it.

Associated Press To Kill Blogs Dead

This is troubling! The Associated Press has filed 7 Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown requests against a site called Drudge Retort (unaffiliated with Matt Drudge). The site is a largely user-generated blog that features headlines, excerpts from news articles, links, and discussion. The AP says this practice is a violation of their intellectual property. Some call it blogging! The AP’s lawyer is having none of that:

you purport that the Drudge Retort’s users reproduce and display AP headlines and leads under a fair use defense. Please note that contrary to your assertion, AP considers that the Drudge Retort users’ use of AP content does not fall within the parameters of fair use. The use is not fair use simply because the work copied happened to be a news article and that the use is of the headline and the first few sentences only. This is a misunderstanding of the doctrine of “fair use.” AP considers taking the headline and lede of a story without a proper license to be an infringement of its copyrights, and additionally constitutes “hot news” misappropriation.

Well. Like we said, troubling! And incredibly short-sighted and stupid!

If the AP “wins” (and they probably will), that could shake the internet to its core.

I believe this is a trial balloon for wider action against bloggers everywhere. The funny thing about it is that bloggers actually drive readers to other sites through their social networking mechanisms. It has become a standard for the internet. No doubt the government will get involved at some point; where does it stop when that happens?