RedGage

Most sites love it when someone links to their story. As long as you only clip a short portion of the story, all you'll be doing, essentially, is driving traffic to the linked site.

You would think that "most" would include The Associated Press (AP), but apparently not.

The Drudge Retort (which not only plays off the Drudge Report's name, but also its look) has been given 7, count 'em, 7 DMCA takedown notices by AP. Besides just linking to news on the front page, the site also has a blog where users (not the site owner) post links and a short excerpt from the article. Sounds Digg-ish, right?

And in fact, this type of posting, using only a few lines of a story with link / attribution has generally been thought of as "fair use." But AP's lawyers apparently disagree, as they told the Drudge Report:

... you purport that the Drudge Retort's users reproduce and display AP headlines and leads under a fair use defense. Please note that contrary to your assertion, AP considers that the Drudge Retort users' use of AP content does not fall within the parameters of fair use. The use is not fair use simply because the work copied happened to be a news article and that the use is of the headline and the first few sentences only. This is a misunderstanding of the doctrine of "fair use." AP considers taking the headline and lede of a story without a proper license to be an infringement of its copyrights, and additionally constitutes "hot news" misappropriation.

As I said, most sites would love to be linked, but of course, AP stories are posted on all manner of third-party sites, and perhaps that's the difference. It's not like Reuters which has its own site as well as having media sites carry its stories. Therefore, a link to an AP story doesn't really give AP itself traffic.

Still, that doesn't make up for the fact that this is most obviously a prime example of "fair use." If something like this sort of takedown notice succeeds, and continues, you'll see Digg, Propeller, and other sites - as well as blogs - suddenly stop linking to AP stories, which is bound to reduce traffic to those sites which carry AP stories. Reduced traffic would eventually lead to less reason to carry AP stories, and less income for AP.

So, AP, get a clue. You're really shooting yourself in the foot.