Saturday, June 28, 2008

Cedar Rapids, Iowa - Flood 2008

I've been busy the past two weeks with flood news on my other blog, My News Muse, and volunteering to help victims this past week, but I finally set up a flood news and photo site.

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

AP double standard

Trouble started last week when Rogers Cadenhead, proprietor of the Drudge Retort (not to be confused with the more well-known Drudge Report), posted on Friday that the AP had sent him not one, but seven take-down notices for article citations on AP news stories.

Yet the AP was caught Monday lifting entire sections for a story published June 16th but which first appeared on the blog Patterico's Pontifications. I checked the article and noticed the AP reporter gave credit to the blog, but the question remains: how much of a story can be used and still be considered "Fair Use"? And of course, the glaring irony also stands--the AP's heavy-handed stance against bloggers quoting from AP articles while the AP lifts larger sections from, well, bloggers.

The Los Angeles Times confirmed on Monday that the AP, in an attempt to quell the backlash from the blogosphere on this ironic twist in violation of copyright standards, said it will "sit down with representatives of a bloggers group Thursday to devise guidelines allowing Internet commentators to use excerpts from AP stories and broadcasts."

The New York Times put it this way: "The A.P.’s effort to impose . . . guidelines on the free-wheeling blogosphere, where extensive quoting and even copying of entire news articles is common, may offer a prominent definition of the important but vague doctrine of “fair use . . . .”

My mother always said to be careful when pointing the finger at someone--three fingers point back at you.