Ka-Ching: The AP Owes Michelle Malkin $132,000

Heh.

This blog's policy is $1000/word, no discounts for extended quotes. There is no requirement that my rate mirror AP's.

So the next time the MSM wants to quote this blog for (as is often the case) purposes of criticism -- look at what crazy right-wingers are saying! -- it's going to cost them.

Further, of course, this license may be revoked at any time by licensor (that would be me), if the licensor determines the licensee is undermining the credibility of this site, any coblogger or commenter on this site, the conservative movement generally, or "the sport of the future," Extreme Hobo Hunting.

And let me say... It's not as if AP has no right to enforce its intellectual property rights, or that I've joined the silly movement claiming such rights don't exist and that "information is free" and all that jazz.

It's that the AP simply refuses to acknowledge any fair-use whatsoever. They insist on payment from word one. So if an AP story calls the Boudemaine decision a "stunning rebuke," and I quote those two words (and only those two words), the AP claims I now owe them $5.00.

Even if those words were actually from another source the AP is itself quoting.

That is preposterous. It's hard to say what "fair use" consists of, but at the very least it consists of a paragraph from a 5-6 paragraph piece, one and a half paragraphs from a 7-9 paragraph piece, two paragraphs from a 10-12 paragraph piece, etc.

The AP has defined the "fair use threshold" as zero. You pay from the very first word. That's not what the law says or has ever said. It's not the law now, and never will be the law.

Even in my digest of the "large earthlike planets story" from yesterday, the AP's jackass "price schedule" demands, I imagine, that I would have to pay for the world "exoplanet" because that appeared in the AP article, despite the fact that, you know, the AP doesn't own that word; it's a term astronomers use.

Two buck fitty, they claim.

Um, no. Fuck you.

(Actually, looking at the "prices" again, it seems they do give you four words free. Um, okay.)

Rachel Lucas looks up Fair Use. Perhaps AP ought to as well.

Again, there's no question that AP has a legitimate right and interest in patrolling the web for wholesale copying-and-pasting of its articles. But attempting to (unlawfully) redefine "fair use" as four words is absurd.

posted by Ace at 01:46 PM

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