FAIR USE? A widely publicized legal conflict between the Associated Press (AP) and a popular blog blew up into an online firestorm this week. But by Friday, the fires were out and both sides were talking constructively.

Controversy swept the blogosphere when AP demanded the Drudge Retort take down seven posts for violation of copyright. The blogging community fought back, saying the AP news organization can't set its own rules for copyright, especially rules stricter than federal laws. Members of both sides met yesterday to discuss the problem and work out a solution.

AP Interprets Fair Use Doctrine Differently than Drudge Retort

The Drudge Retort, whose name parodies the popular conservative blog The Drudge Report, is a social news website whose content comes from more than 8,500 members. The seven postings in question contained up to 79 words pulled verbatim from AP stories.

According to the AP, this violated the "fair use" doctrine (see sidebar).

Drudge Retort owner/operator Rogers Cadenhead posted his own take on the issue. He noted that copyright holders cannot restrict small amounts of their work from being reprinted.

Blogs, such as the Drudge Retort, rely on the fair use clause:

• They often begin posts with part of an article relevant to the topic to be discussed.
• They often provide a link to take the reader to the original story.

AP aggressively defends its copyright. The agency released a statement last Friday that said it planned to dispute any posting of an AP article "when we feel the use is more reproduction than reference, or when others are encouraged to cut and paste." (The New York Times, 6/16/08)

Bloggers Say AP Restrictions Would Dampen Online Discussion

AP's stance outraged the blogging community:

• Bloggers claim AP restrictions would discourage online discussions of important issues.
• A large number of influential bloggers, including The Washington Post's TechCrunch blogger Michael Arrington, called for a boycott of AP material.

"The A.P. doesn't get to make it's [sic] own rules around how its content is used, if those rules are stricter than the law allows," Arrington wrote recently on his blog. (TechCrunch, 6/16/08)

AP Damage Control Leads to Dialogue

As anti-AP sentiment exploded across thousands of blogs this week, AP Vice President and Strategy Director Jim Kennedy personally responded to some of the blog postings.

AP's Take: "We need to protect our content, no matter who's using it," said AP's Kennedy using the same comment on each blog. "But we also recognize that the bloggers perform a really important function on the internet in terms of increasing the engagement of the audience online, and we want to facilitate that." (Marketing VOX, 6/18/08)

Kennedy also met with Robert Cox, president of the Media Bloggers Association (MBA), to define what AP considers acceptable usage of its content.

Bloggers' Take: Cox strongly supported communicating with the AP on the matter of what oversteps the bounds of fair use.

Cox, who had offered to assist Cadenhead with the AP complaints, facilitated conversations between Cadenhead and AP lawyers. He also urged AP to provide guidelines bloggers could use to avoid these conflicts in the future:

In fact, on the association's blog, Cox explained that AP originally contacted the Drudge Retort in April over different postings. One post reprinted the entire text of an AP article. Cadenhead then contacted MBA for guidance.

On his blog, Cox said, "[a]ny discussion about how AP could better communicate its view of what is and is not acceptable is important and useful..." (Media Bloggers Association, 6/18/08)

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Question for Readers:

Do you use material on your blog under the "fair use" doctrine? If so, do you worry about copyright infringement?