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$12.50 to quote 5 words of an AP story

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Re: $12.50 to quote 5 words of an AP story

#51
post #50
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are probably right. But there is another interesting question - is for-profit news aggregation, where you quote a part of the article, fair use? Bloggers do that, user-powered aggregator sites do that, but is it fair use? Because in most cases, the quote itself carries a news value, and those quoting websites are commercial venues. I am just asking...

It's more difficult to prove, but having been for commercial use doesn't preclude fair-use: "While commercial copying for profit work may make it harder to qualify as fair use, it does not make it impossible. For instance, in the 2 Live Crew—Oh, Pretty Woman case, it was ruled that commercial parody can be fair use." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use#Common_misunderstandin...

Yes, but if they are adding nothing to the content but ad's, is that fair use?

Re: $12.50 to quote 5 words of an AP story

#52
post #49
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are probably right. But there is another interesting question - is for-profit news aggregation, where you quote a part of the article, fair use? Bloggers do that, user-powered aggregator sites do that, but is it fair use? Because in most cases, the quote itself carries a news value, and those quoting websites are commercial venues. I am just asking...

I've always found it quite strange that the people who make the money off an article (assuming diggs/reddits etc are generating revenue) are those who merely aggregate content and submit it to these sites. They add nothing to the equation. I don't see this as fair use.

Aggregators certainly can add value. The aggregator makes a choice of which articles to include vs which to omit. This is an editorial decision. This in turn allows readers to find content of interest to them without having to hunt for it themselves.

Re: $12.50 to quote 5 words of an AP story

#53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2.50?

Hey, you can get 25 words for the price of 5 - a $50 value!

But wait, that's not all! If you respond now we will include a handful of prepositions and a huge pile of adjectives for no extra charge!

Re: $12.50 to quote 5 words of an AP story

#54
post #28
post #14

No problem. Using my handy AP obfuscator... For compliance reasons, please identify the web site where you will be posting or linking this article. becomes For compliance reasons, please aardvark identify the web site aardvark where you will be aardvark posting or linking this aardvark article. A new market for Firefox AP de-obfuscation plug-ins?

You could always quote the AP article and just remove all the spaces, turning it into one gigantic word. Sort of like: Forcompliancereasonspleaseidentifythewebsitewhereyouwillbepostingorlinkingthisarticle That would bring it under the 5 word threshold for which you need to pay, although it would definitely cause havoc with layouts on websites.

how_about_underscores_and_a_greasemonkey_script?

Re: $12.50 to quote 5 words of an AP story

#57

I pasted my own work into the text box, and it tried to charge me money. It also let me buy, "fuck you, ever heard of fair use". (OK, I used a fake credit card number, but it got all the way to failing credit card authorization. Disgusting. Why do they think they can legally resell my work!?)

I guess it's an assumption that if you try to buy it from AP, then you have already concluded that the text is copyrighted by AP. I doubt they have instant access to everything they've ever written...

Re: $12.50 to quote 5 words of an AP story

#58

I think I owe them a lot of money. Do the words have to be consecutive ? In order ? In the same article ? That's going to make the AP a lot of money I bet. It's going to be hard to get on without them, but we're certainly going to try our best. btw, I'm fairly sure there is a legally allowed minimum that you can quote from anything under fair use.

It is my understanding that the law says nothing definite about what is fair use, it only gives guidelines about what shall be taken into consideration when determining whether it is. That's a big part about why exercising your right to fair use exposes you to frivolous lawsuits that you have to be able to defend yourself agains.

Re: $12.50 to quote 5 words of an AP story

#59
post #2

This is just disgusting.

It is, but it's a bargain compared to a Verisign SSL certificate.

If you stick to ASCII and take the generally accepted average of 5 letters per English word, the AP are charging $12.50 for 200 bits. VeriSign's "Secure Site Pro with EV" costs $1499 for 256 bits and it's only good for a year!

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