The big news at the moment is about the draconian measures taken by the Associated Press towards bloggers. In case you haven't spotted the story yet, the background is this. Well known blogger was accused of using quotes from AP articles, quoting up to (wait for it) 39 to 79 words (not exactly plagiarism in my book but, well, who am I to say?). AP get upset (also known as throwing toys out of their pram) and demanded (probably whilst stamping their collective feet) that the references be removed. Needless to say, this kind of tactic did not sit too well with the blogosphere, who politely made a bit of a ruckus. After a bit of back and forth, some back-pedalling from those whose toys are now sitting on the floor and a lot of conversation (you've got to love how things spread on the internet), the AP, in their infinite wisdom have decided that if you want to use as few as five of their words, you, dear blogger, carrier of information to the global community, can pay...
OK...perhaps I am missing something here. Am I very much mistaken, or does the blogosphere work because it fosters discussion, allows people to comment on and about other content on the internet, allows interaction, criticism and quotation, and grows because content is used and expanded upon? Isn't the free world a better place because it can criticise the traditional press, which, I hate to say it, will more than likely require the criticisor to use words from the criticisee in order for it to actually make sense? As Patrick at Making Light says, does this mean that no-one will be able to criticise the press unless you are willing to pay up? (the cynic in me says nice business model from AP - you criticise, we make money, you bring us more traffic, we make money, or you avoid us altogether forcing people to buy our media in order to find out what the mainstream press is mentioning and...way-hey! We make money!)
Honestly...what is going on? To me, this is just going to encourage people to quote without linking or referring, paraphrase, which could easily end up skewing the original meaning, or just ignoring any media owned by the AP altogether. I may be starry eyed, but free speech generally ends up finding a way. What will the AP's next move be? Develop complex software to search the blogosphere for anyone who has dared to use the same combination of words that they have and then demand that they remove them or pay up? How are they going to prove that the blogger actually deliberately used that combination? What if said blogger simply was fortunate (or unfortunate more like) to come up with a 5 word sentence which happened to be the same as one of the AP's 1500 sources? And how about those phrases used beyond blogs - in non-fiction books for instance? Then what?
TechCrunch called a boycott on the Associated Press - not an insignificant site to do so. Does the AP care? Probably not (see cynical business model above). Will it have an effect? Who knows? Some people are saying the boycott is just silly, while others are upholding it. Personally, I do feel that something has to be done so in essence, I am in favour of it. Yes, discussion needs to be undertaken, but that little cynical voice in me is once again saying that any discussion is going to be old media (i.e. power, money, tradition, more money and more tradition...oh and a bit more power) telling new media (not so much money, no tradition, less power) how it is. I feel that sometimes in order for something to happen, a serious shake up and some extreme measures have to take place. Otherwise, it is all too easy for rules to be embedded which will ultimately damage the amazing growth of new media and increased online communication in the future, over the sake of a handful of words.
I am not at all against copyright. In fact, I am all for it - when it is reasonable. If you are using a full article of someone else's to BE your story (I am thinking scrapers, black hat SEOers and lazy opportunists here) then by all means, they should come down hard on you. But if you are quoting for the sake of conversation and building a rich discussion and different opinions, then sorry, but they should pick their rattles back up. By moving with the times, they might even end up coming out ahead.
Thank you to Kapungo for the image