An interesting situation is brewing over at the TechCrunch blog. Michael Arrington, upset over the Associated Press going after bloggers who quote from AP stories, has argued that the AP is not taking Fair Use into consideration and has declared that he will not report on stories distributed by AP.
Extreme? Not if you take into consideration the APs rate schedule for online quoting of their articles. If your quote of an AP source contains just five words, you are supposed to pay them $12.50! I doubt that there are many AP articles short enough to make a five word quote not fall into Fair Use (plus, I assume under this fee schedule that quoting just four words is free).
The new twist is that an AP article about the controversy contains a 22-word quote from the TechCrunch blog that Arrington says was “in clear violation of their warped interpretation of copyright law”. His response: his lawyer is submitting a takedown request and a bill for $12.50, in order to hold the AP to their own standards.
I have written about “copyfraud” before, most notably here, but this is a fantastic example as it involves a company that derives tremendous benefits from the application of Fair Use.
