The following article is from webpronews.com -- AP is firing the first shot across the bow in setting the precedent for linking to articles from the mainstream media.
I have been warning about this for months now.
The precedent for this has NOT yet been set on the internet. That I why I have been asking all my posters to be VERY careful when quoting articles from the major media.
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Submitted by Rich Ord on Wed, 10/10/2007 - 15:29.
The Associated Press is suing news-aggregation site Moreover and its parent company VeriSign for copyright infringement for snippeting and linking to its news.
snip
Much of this law is still not completely settled, but publishers generally rely on the fair use principle that small snippets linking to a story are permissible. Cases like AP vs. Moreover can open a can of worms for the largest news aggregation sites on the Internet such as Google News and The Drudge Report. This likely is the reason that Google signed an agreement with the AP a couple of weeks ago to link to AP stories within Google itself rather than other AP partner sites like CNN.
What would be of concern to Google, Drudge and many others is a rogue ruling by a not-so-Internet-savvy Federal Judge that would put real restrictions on linking to news. So far, the prevailing standard has been the legal concept of fair use. Hopefully, this case is assigned to a judge who realizes that the Internet is based on links. The use of an article title and short summary has been considered fair use in past cases. However, I am not sure if the use of smaller versions of copyrighted pictures regularly used by Google News and Drudge will withstand this fair use test.
The legal filing itself shows a complete lack of understanding of the Internet in general and online news aggregation in particular:
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Note from Rayelan:
If this ruling goes badly, it will change the face of the Internet forever.
All of us need to keep an eye on this... THIS is the PRECEDENT SETTING CASE that I have been waiting for.
Keep you fingers crossed that this case goes before Judge who understands the nature of the Internet.
Please read the full article... with ALL its links on webpronews.com
http://www.webpronews.com/insiderreports/2007/10/10/ap-suing-moreover-like-its-1999
