Associated Press Clamps Down on Blogs

A weekend incident involving The Drudge Retort and multiple Associated Press articles has created a lot of drama between the media giant and the exponentially growing blogosphere.

The New York Times is reporting that the AP is setting guidelines for blog usage of AP content after the AP sent takedown notices to The Drudge Retort last week. The AP's guidelines will deal with what and how much content blogs can quote and still be considered legal use under the fair use doctrine of U.S. copyright law.

The AP's decision to impose blog-use guidelines is shocking. It's one thing to go after blogs that copy the entire length of an AP story without any linking or recognition, but it's another to go after personal blogs that aren't looking to profit from using AP content, or the professional news outlet blogs that generally provide proper acknowledgment and accompanying links. This doesn't even consider social-news Web sites like Digg that commonly use excerpts from stories. Depending on how rigorous the AP guidelines are, this decision by the AP may stifle the current Web 2.0 trends of cross-linking and content-distribution, which is what makes blogs so great.

For fear of The New York Times slapping me with a lawsuit, I won't directly quote, but AP vice president, Jim Kennedy, defended his stance saying he doesn't want to sue bloggers, but maximize the value for its content.

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