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Fair use usually allows one to quote people, especially given that they were linking people back to the originals. But the AP has always been funny about that, so you're always best off quoting another source.

Remember, the AP doesn't care how little you quote or if you link back to them. They've gone after random forum posts, too[1], so you're best off just not reading their stuff. That will make it better, right?

[1] http://www.afterdawn.com/news/article.cfm/2008/06/17/ap_goes...

You have fallen victim to the classic fallacy of equating content distributors with content creators. The whole point of these innovations is often breaking up the relationship between the two.

Publishers in Germany are indeed trying to pass a new law that would enable them to sue Google for using snippets on Google News. Thats literally the whole point of the law - get some money out of Google, because they are not making any with their news websites. They have failed monetizing their content and are now trying to corner the biggest single source of traffic hitting their sites. Lament about copyright all you want, this is an industry unwilling to innovate and reform alright.

I mostly agree with you, but organizing a bunch of stories that mention certain keywords is innovative and useful. And there is a big problem with the way the current system works: Meltwater is supposed to go negotiate some deal with the AP, even when providing content to clients who are themselves licensed to access the AP content. I think you'd see much more indie content of the mash-up variety if there were an efficient way to handle the licensing.

There is nothing "outdated" or "obsolete" about content production. The issue is that technological advance has effectively stripped the business of the legal protection that it - like every other healthy business on the planet - depends on for survival.

Obviously, the unilateral extension the existing legal framework into the new technological sphere is a recipe for disaster. I'll be the first to condem the ham-fisted attempts to do so, and applaud the fully justified push back that promoters of unenlightened copyright laws have received.

But to go a step further, and declare that this business - and this business alone - is "undeserving" of any legal protection whatsoever, and that it - and it alone - "needs to figure out a business model" that doesn't enjoy legal protection from those who refuse to pay for goods taken or received, overshoots the mark. And the persistance of these arguments is exactly why we need laws in the first place: put simply, some people are self-serving assholes. They lack a sense of fairness or decency, and will follow the norms of reciprocity only under threat of force.

Most people don't get further than their freshman year in high school without discovering that these people are real, they are numerous, and they are a curse. But like any number of curses (war, plague, famine, etc.) they cannot be wished away. They have to be dealt with head on, forcefully, and with enough severity to provide a deterrent to others who may be considering similarly abusive pathways to profit.

With copyright, the question is, where do you draw the line? My own feeling is that copyright law, which evolved over centuries, was never intended to govern the conduct of private individuals. Historically, efforts by publishers to extend their control into the realm of private, personal life have been wisely checked (the Doctrine of First Sale is a shining example). And while the relentless extension of copyright terms represents unchecked abuse, it's been limited in that it still (grudgingly) respects the operative delineation between public, commercial enterprise, and private sharing and enjoyment. Indeed, these limitations have been the key to copyright's longevity as an institution. While some publishers still chafe at any limitations, the more enlightened ones recognize that these parameters are actually the key to a thriving culture, which is, in turn, their most vital natural resource.

That's why I think any efforts to prosecute private individuals under existing copyright laws are an abomination. Reform - which we desperately need - should include simple, unambiguous boundaries beyond which no publisher can reach. And the life on the other side of those boundaries should be rich and noisy and free. Of all the options I can think of, drawing the line with corporate status is the most elegant. That is to say, you can only be sued for infringement if you are a corporation.

Under this rule, the AP would have both the right and the responsibility to throw the book at a commercial clipping service. As noted, the AP has no monopoly on news gathering. If they fail to innovate themselves, or gouge those who are willing to partner with them, they leave the market to other, savvier news organizations. At the same time, they remain free to charge proces in line with their full set of costs (i.e. production and distribution), and not just the rapidly falling cost of distribution alone.

I don't think it's necessarily a problem that you can go after individuals for copyright infringement--the problem is the statutory damages. In nearly every other civil suit, the fact that you can only get actual or punitive damages filters out suits where there wasn't really substantial harm to begin with. Without the statutory damages there would be no reason to go after individuals for copyright infringement unless they were setting up a major operation in which case you should be able to go after them, individual or not.

That's a really good point. I suppose that getting rid of the (insane) statutory damages would make it economically unviable to enforce the law at the individual level, and you could secure a healthy space beyond publisher's reach in this way.

That said, I dislike the kind of law that makes everyone a criminal by default, since opens the entire population to arbitrary enforcement. The other advantage of limiting enforcement action to incorporated entities is that it sidesteps any sticky questions about individual freedom of speech.

More importantly, it provides for a commercial adolescence. There's a big gap, after all, between the work of hobbyists and professionals. And publishers have been able to exploit this to the detriment of artists and audiences alike. So I'm in favor of people being able to make commercial use of copyright protected materials without permission or payment - so long as they do so as private individuals. The assumption is that people finding limited commercial success and wanting to carry that further will find corporate entities indispensable. Whether they set up their own, or go into partnership with ones that already exist, they'll need them to grow. These are people who are ready and able to pay for the professionally produced sources they rely on. Indeed, I suspect that people with serious professional ambition will focus on handling these responsibilities in the same way that ambitious undergraduates with an eye on graduate school manage to limit social life for the sake of their studies. It becomes an expected part of going pro.

The famously exploitive agreements that artists have suffered under can usually be traced to the absence of a space in which they can freely prove their commercial viability. Creating this space would not only allow more professional artists to develop (especially ones not connected to independent wealth), it would establish a far healthier balance of power between them and the major publishers and distributers that are usually needed to develop one's appeal and audience fully.

Copyright law has not, IMO, been as fair as you seem to make it sound, especially when it comes to the music industry:

> have been wisely checked (the Doctrine of First Sale is a shining example)

Like the way that I can sell my DRM music to a second party?

> it's been limited in that it still (grudgingly) respects the operative delineation between public, commercial enterprise, and private sharing and enjoyment.

Tell that to the RIAA who sue individuals all the time.

> Of all the options I can think of, drawing the line with corporate status is the most elegant. That is to say, you can only be sued for infringement if you are a corporation.

So, individuals who pirate software, music, and movies should not be able to be sued at all? What if they distribute said pirated works?

Im sorry if I sound a bit snarky, I just feel that this is a complicated issue which you are way oversimplifying.

Isn't AP just (aspiring to be) a cartel? What makes them interesting? Not sure I get it.

How is AP a cartel?

An "association" of (aspiring) monopolistic rent seekers is == Cartel. Ie, they are seeking to control supply side economics through limited distribution. etc.

[1] Obviously, Copyrights are legally granted monopolies.

Neither "rent seeking" nor "cartel" nor "monopolistic" means what you seem to think it means.

Rent seeking is defined as trying to profit from activity that would've happened anyway without you. Since Meltwater is excerpting articles written by AP affiliates, the AP cannot be rent seeking in this case because without them the articles in question would not exist.

"Monopolistic" usually refers to entities that have a monopoly on a particular kind of good. AP affiliates have no monopoly on news. Their copyright over their original content is a "legally granted monopoly" but in the sense that any property right is a legally granted monopoly. I'm not engaging in "monopolistic" practices because the government grants me a legal monopoly over my back yard. You're essentially punning on the word "monopoly." E.g. AMD has a monopoly on "Opteron" processors but is not a "monopoly" because it doesn't control the supply of processors.

"Cartel" is an organization of companies who control the supply of a type of good colluding to fix prices for that good. AP does not control the supply of news and hence cannot be a cartel.

Thank you.

It never ceases to amaze me how much of the "criticism" aimed at copyright depends on massive distortion of otherwise well-defined words.

Refusing to pay your rent to a property management company on the grounds that they're a rent-seeking cartel exercising monopolistic control over "your" apartment is not astute economic analysis. Rather, it's the mark of a (soon to be evicted) idiot. Lambasting the creator and owner of an intellectual property for running a commercial operation to recover his costs and produce a profit is the same thing.

And before anyone insists that "copies are different" and "making isn't taking", it's worth remembering that the bone of contention isn't in the copies. It's in the money that's not changing hands after the copy has been made. Economically speaking, digital media may be a special case in that units have zero marginal cost. But we don't throw up our hands and say "oh well, that's the end of professionally produced media." Instead, we recognize the inability of free markets to meet all our needs, realize that laws also play a vital role in advanced societies, and create exclusive and legally protected terms and conditions under which creators can safely exploit their work.

And while it's true that major publishers routinely display cartel-like behavior in their negotiations with artists, it's ridiculous to say that they maintain any kind of industry-wide monopoly with regard to the general public. Indeed, anyone working in these businesses can tell you how fiercely you need to compete to win public favor. It's no OPEC, that's for sure.

massive distortion of otherwise well-defined words

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_rent

You may want to re-check your work.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking

more specific

Specifically not on point....the qualification at the beginning in particular.

What allows for "control the supply"? You can have either physical possession amid physical scarcity (ie, saudie arabia/opec vs oil) or legal means of exclusion amid infitite propogation (ie, abstract possesion of an abstract good). Copyright is necessary but not sufficient step to make a business of the latter. You're implying AP is a failed cartel...and in this yes, you are right. But this also points out why it is being faught for. The quesion is: why is it interesting? And not just a failure...

Control of supply requires not just a monopoly over some good, but a monopoly over some good that isn't easily fungible. That's why AMD isn't a "monopoly" despite having a monopoly on Opteron processors, or why ARM vendors aren't a cartel despite ARM having a monopoly on ARM processors. Both are easily replaced with competing products. AP only has a monopoly over articles it's affiliated write--but that is a fingible good,messily replaced by news articles from say Reuters.

Agree, but your re-wording the notion of scarcity. you actually can control things that there is limited/tepid demand for. but this is confusing rent-seeking with rent-extracting. eg. in this example: it can be equally true AP is a failed rent extractor, but (is still) an active rent seeker. There is no contradiction.

Defining the product in question to encompass only AP's content is ridiculous. It's like saying AMD is rent seeking because it controls the supply of Opteron processors.

Let's add "rent seeking" to the list of terms you've failed to properly understand.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent_seeking

You'll note that the defining characteristic of rent seeking behavior is the effort to avoid producing new and valuable work by expending resources petitioning for changes in the regulatory environment instead (e.g. diverting resources from the production of new movies to lobby for retroactive extensions of copyright protection on old movies). In other words, it has a precise, limited meaning and is not a fancy term for "just wanting to charge rent in general".

AP going to court to enforce existing laws protecting new work is pretty much the opposite of rent seeking behavior in that (a) they're spending resources to operate within the existing regulatory framework, not petitioning to alter it in their favor and (b) they're doing so in conjunction with the production of new (and presumably) economically valuable work.

You actually need to understand "economic rents" are first.

You're essentially punning on the word "monopoly."

Not that it makes it right, but it should be noted that Thomas Jefferson called them "monopolies" as well when discussing the Copyright Clause of the Constitution.

Right, but the sense of the two usages of the word is different (hence punning). Every property right is a monopoly. But when we talk about monopolies in the sense of cartels, there has to be some control over non-fungible supply. E.g. Every oil producing country has a monopoly over its own oil. That's the monopoly inherent in a property right. But that's not what makes them cartels. What makes them cartels is that together they control 70% of world supply, of a good for which there is no easy substitute.

But Thomas Jefferson considered copyright a monopoly unlike other property rights, since he was concerned about allowing any monopoly, yet he obviously wasn't talking about abolishing private property.