It’s Bipartisan. Bloggers Boycott and Taunt the AP

Posted by Myrna the Minx on June 17, 2008 | Comments (1) | Trackbacks (0)

You know a blogger cause is good when it has bipartisan support from political bloggers. It’s almost unanimous—political bloggers are either boycotting or taunting the Associated Press, depending on how many friends they have that are lawyers–a phenomenon that increases in line with the blogs popularity.

For instance, Markos of DailyKos openly taunted the AP in a post today by posting 120 words from an AP article with the following remarks:

“Hey AP — that’s 120 words. Have your lawyers call my lawyers.”

….

“Lots of blogs are calling for boycotts of AP content. Not me. I’m going to keep using it. I will copy and paste as many words as I feel necessary to make my points and that I feel are within bounds of copyright law (and remember, I’ve got a JD and specialized in media law, so I know the rules pretty well). And I will keep doing so if I get an AP takedown notice (which I will make a big public show of ignoring). And then, either the AP — an organization famous for taking its members work without credit — will either back down and shut the hell up, or we’ll have a judge resolve the easiest question of law in the history of copyright jurisprudence.

The AP doesn’t get to negotiate copyright law. But now, perhaps, they’ll threaten someone who can afford to fight back, instead of cowardly going after small bloggers.”

Michelle Malkin takes another approach by using the AP’s new billing formula to calculate how much the AP owes her and her commenters for the times they’ve been quoted in AP articles without a link back to the original post. Malkin’s far from complete bill to the AP was $132,125.

I doubt the AP owes me anything, but if I had more lawyer friends, I would probably join the taunting effort immediately Taunting isn’t nice, but neither is targeting independent bloggers who cannot afford to fight an organization like the AP. The boycott, organized in literally minutes over email, launched AP executives into damage control just a few hours later. Some old media is doing its best to integrate with new media. It will be those that don’t integrate that will find themselves out of luck in the end.

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And will AP and other outlets be paying us when they lift our content??

Comment by PunditMom on June 20, 2008 @ 9:19 am

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