The Associated Press has announced a new "Excerpt for Web Use" policy to make it clear to bloggers what they can and cannot do with AP content. After suing bloggers for using as few as 5 words in posts, the AP felt a massively negative backlash from the powerful blogosphere. It's response, let's start charging bloggers who use our content! Could the AP make a move that is more stupid?
Here's the deal. To make it super easy for bloggers, you can visit the AP's Excerpt for Web Use page where you can copy and paste the text you want to cite in your blog post, enter the URL for the site you want to use the exerpt on, hit the submit button, and the handy calculator automatically spits back the fee you'll have to pay to use that content.
The Associated Press fees are defined on a tiered scale as follows:
| 5-25 words = | $ 12.50 |
| 26-50 words = | $ 17.50 |
| 51-100 words = | $ 25.00 |
| 101-250 words = | $ 50.00 |
| 251 words and up = | $ 100.00 |
I wonder if I'll get charged for copying those fees here.
Bloggers from Newshoggers to the Daily Kos and many in between continue to bring bad press to the AP thanks to this new fee-based system. In fact, the Daily Kos plans to continue citing AP content and plans to fight the battle in court if the AP threatens them.
Perhaps one of the funniest parts of this debacle is the story of the AP lifting 154 words of content from Patterico's Pontifications. Applying the AP fee schedule, that would equate to $50 that the AP owes Patterico's Pontifications. So far, the AP has not sent payment.
The AP boycott is still on. Have you joined in? How do you weigh in on this battle?
In case you missed any part of this ongoing story, you can get up to speed on this story in these MarketingBlurb posts:
Oh. My. Gosh. Just when I thought the AP couldn't get any stupider...
Posted by: Miranda | June 18, 2008 9:10 AM | Permalink to Comment