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By David Rothman

Associated PressShort of the Klan or Nazis or maybe Al-Qaeda, the RIAA just might be the most hated organization on the Net—with its automated lawyering.

But could the Associated Press, the wire service whose news inspires zillions of blog postings, be about to do an RIAA-style act against Netfolks?

Well, it’s not quite clear what will happen, but if you read J.D. Lasica and the San Jose Mercury News, the RIAA inevitably comes to mind. The Merc says the news agency has hired “a Redwood City start-up to track how news stories get spread around the Internet.

“Founded last year by a former Yahoo executive and Xerox PARC research scientist, Attributor [link added] can distill a news story, photograph, graphic, radio report or video into a digital fingerprint and find copies of the story on the billions of Web pages.

“‘Attributor aims to bring transparency and accountability to the online content economy,’ said Jim Brock, chief executive and co-founder of Attributor.

“Unauthorized copying of digital content has led to lawsuits against companies as diverse as Google and Napster. Indeed, the Associated Press had complained to Google about how the search engine used AP’s content. The two later signed a deal to create a joint service. That service has not yet launched.”

“Srinandan Kasi, AP’s general counsel, said he couldn’t talk about any aspect of AP’s relationship with Google. Kasi said the deal with Attributor would ‘enable AP to safeguard its investment in creating and distributing news reports.’”

That pesky fair use issue

Ugh, what about fair use? Just what qualifies? How about bloggers who, rather than just reproducing AP articles, incorporate them smoothly into their own commentaries on important, civic-related matters? Keep in mind the criteria for fair use:

“1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
“2. the nature of the copyrighted work;
“3. the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
“4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.”

In fairness to AP, plenty of complexities arise. Systematically gathering news can be expensive and—contrary to myth on the Net—not something that can be casually taken care of by volunteers. Is a blogger without a corporate or ideological agenda going to follow around George Bush? And perhaps stand in the rain waiting for a comment from a presidential candidate on a breaking news story? While the AP historically has hardly been impervious to corporate or government influence, it’s less of a risk than someone who has been directly bought and paid for.

A possible solution

Here’s my idea. If I were AP, I’d use a very light touch on the less serious bloggers who probably don’t have a large readership anyway. In situations like the TeleBlog, where we’re considering some use of advertising to pay for server costs, wouldn’t it be great if some or all of the ads could come from AP and Reuters rather than Google? Perhaps in return not just for money but also for the right to run copy and photos without fear of legal action? Maybe AP and other wire services could actually team up with Google and use Attributor to determine the extent to which the services could share advertising revenue.

Rather than saber-rattling, AP and other wire services need to be more imaginative and more open to new business opportunities. In this era when the First Amendment is so often under attack here in the States, the last thing AP needs is to make enemies on the Net.

Bad example for e-book publishers

Same concept applies to e-book publishers. Rather than fighting fan fiction, for example, publishers should seek ways to turn a buck off it. If AP goes ahead with an aggressive, Dobermanish approach to copyright, I hope that e-book publishers will resist the temptation to follow. Instead just keep in mind all the bad feelings that the RIAA has created.

 
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