Updated: June 18, 2009
The AP announced a new policy Monday intended to control the use of its content by websites and bloggers – any website using the work of news organizations must obtain permission and share revenue with AP or face legal challenge.
Find a well balanced analysis of this announcement and its implications on Greg Sterling’s blog post at Search Engine Land.
Executives at AP said they didn’t want to stop the appearance of their articles on the Internet, but wanted to exercise some control over and profit from the practice.
News aggregators and search engines like Google contend that collecting short pieces of articles – usually the headline and first two sentences – is allowed under the “fair use” doctrine of the U.S. Copyright Act.
AP claims their goal is simply to insure that top search engine results for news are the most original and authoritative sources available and not a site that simply copied or paraphrased the work.
See the full article here.