AP Take Down Demands Seems Overreaching

The AP Should Rethink Their Policy

I’m just now digesting the Associated Press (AP) decision to issue take down notices to bloggers and website owners who quote excerpts from AP articles on their own sites. According to various reports including here and here, the news service recently started issuing DMCA (Digital Media Copyright Act) notices to offending publishers.

Boy, is someone at the AP instituting a really dumb policy.

All right, I won’t defend everyone’s right to republish excerpts of news on their sites, but the AP seems to be making a huge mistake with this blanket policy. Specifically, when someone includes a blurb from an AP article, they also provide a link back to the AP. And, I must tell you, that some of the links going back to the AP carry a lot of weight with them.

Stick Out Foot And Shoot It

At the very least, the AP is shooting themselves in the foot by cutting off their supply chain of readers. If people cannot easily find an AP article, even if only a blurb is provided, AP traffic is likely to decrease. I wonder if the folks at Reuters, Bloomberg, BBC, and other news services are clapping their hands with glee?

I am not 100% familiar with all of the particulars of the DMCA — if you read the Wikipedia entry you’ll understand why — it is quite long and somewhat hard to decipher. Regardless, the AP does have the authority to enforce the DMCA (based on Title II, infringing material), but the wisdom of doing so is likely to backfire.

The Letter Killeth

C’mon AP, lighten up. There is the spirit of the law and there is the letter of the law. By upholding the letter of the law you risk losing the goodwill of bloggers who are (for the most part) your allies in the dissemination of news, not your competitors. Unless, of course, you want to create a new breed of internet competitors who will work against, not for you.