washington, dc

The Democratic Strategist

Political Strategy for a Permanent Democratic Majority

AP Versus Bloggers

I did a post this morning linking to and quoting liberally from an AP story on the sad state of the federal Election Assistance Commission, though taking the subject in a different direction in my own remarks. Only later did I discover there was a big brouhaha over the weekend caused by some legal saber-rattling by AP aimed at bloggers quoting content from AP stories. Indeed, AP appeared to be taking the very restrictive line that anything beyond links and “summarizations” were a violation of copyright law. Bloggers, naturally, responded with a call for a boycott of AP altogether: no quotes, no traffic-driving links, either.
AP has subsequently backed down a bit and appears to be reconsidering its policies towards quotes. But until this is all sorted out, I’ll go with my blogger colleagues and ignore AP stories.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.