Last week I read Jeff Jarvis’ take on the ado from Associated Press regarding bloggers quoting and linking to AP articles. Seems the Associated Press has declared a copyright war against the Blogosphere, even though small blogs such as mine, redirect many users to AP stories.
After reading BloggersBlog and JournalismNews on Twitter I have joined the boycott of all Associated Press materiel, and will not link or quote any information from AP.
Click on the image or title to join in this boycott yourself.
Well, I know you have to always give credit where it's due, if they're doing so --then what's the big deal? More to the point, how do you police this and how much money do you spend to go after every single blogger who happens to mention or use and image from your story?
ReplyDeleteSeems to me blogging is the chief source of information distribution. Admittedly, we take it from the press --who are paid for their reporting. The problem I see is that X writes a story for the AP and gets paid, then Y uses the story for his blog and also has advertisements on the sidebar, so he's in some way profiting because his collecting from the internet is bringing in stories, then maybe there are issues.
Maybe.
But I have a better idea. Instead of taking whole sections of stories out of the AP, limit it to three lines and link back to AP. OR better yet, paraphrase the information in your own words --then link back to AP.
I don't know. Blogging is where it's at. Imperfect and prone to biases as it might be, I think we're enjoying a halcyon time. Right now it's free. It won't be long before Blogger and the rest start charging to run blogs.