Update: See comment from Mr. Higginbotham; AP claims machine error and not arrogance.
Potential collisions are delicious: Associated Press versus the Library of Congress’s “Thomas” legislation tracker; Associated Press versus the Supreme Court for quoting the Declaration of Independence.
Associated Press versus the Southern Baptist Convention and Holy See for quoting the Bible, in phrases Jefferson used in his mashup of the New Testament.
Sotomayor either doesn’t know what she’s in for, or she saw this coming and is going to relish the ride.
James Grimmelman at The Laboratorium has been tracking AP’s attempts to wring pennies out of penniless bloggers and scholars for using AP product. On the one hand, AP certainly deserves credit and payment for the great work it does reporting the news.
On the other hand, AP policies don’t seem much concerned with reporting news or creating new product that can make money for the organization, but instead seem bent on punishing people who read Associated Press stories. (Full disclosure: I make it a point to avoid AP stories and images on topics of my interest just to avoid the conflict — oddly, I’ve found that this actually does shift my news sources on major stories.)
Grimmelman caught AP red-handed in what must be a much embarrassing gaffe: He asked permission from AP to quote from a letter written by Thomas Jefferson which AP had not published.
Sure enough, AP told him he owed them $12 to quote the letter, and AP offered to restrict the uses of the letter.
Grimmelman said:
The Associated Press has become so deranged, so disconnected from reality, that it will sell you a “license” to quote words it didn’t write and doesn’t own. Here, check it out:
Screen capture of Associated Presss charging for a Thomas Jefferson letter in the public domain – The Laboratorium
These things threaten to put hoax makers out of business. Who could think of something so absurd? Grimmelman said:
I paid $12 for this “license.” Those words don’t even come from the article they charged me 46 cents a word to quote from (and that’s with the educational discount). No, they’re from Thomas Jefferson’s letter to Isaac McPherson, in which Jefferson argues that copyright has no basis in natural law.
(A commenter notes that Jefferson was actually writing about patents, but close is good enough in hand grenades and freedom of the press and freedom of thought.)
Grimmelman has more thoughts (and links to his earlier work on the issue). Boing-Boing did a cover of Grimmelman’s piece.
James Grimmelman pwns AP instead.
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
Thanks for the information, Mr. Higginbotham. Nice to know it was machine error and not arrogance.
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Generally, spam filters on blogs are set to automatically flag any post with more than three links. That additional link put you over the limit. I’ve got the level set higher here, but for some reason the machine though you had more links than you did.
Drop me a line if a post gets hung up. I only moderate for profanity, commercial enterprise and spam, especially pornographic or obscene spam.
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I like to add url’s if i copy from the web but neither this site nor The Agitator will let me post url of the AP press release. Rather ironic for a post making fun of an automated system.
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yep Scott you are right
[can i not post url of this release?]
08/03/2009
Statement:
AP Statement on iCopyright’s Automated Form to License AP Content
The iCopyright form that enables users to license AP content online is drawing new attention this week.
It is an automated form, thus explaining how one blogger got it to charge him for the words of a former president.
As the AP stated more than a year ago, the form is not aimed at bloggers. It is intended to make it easy for people who want to license AP content to do so.
AP partners with iCopyright to automate fulfillment of routine requests for rights to republish AP material, either from AP-hosted sites or member and customer sites carrying AP content. The licensing options vary greatly, from an array of uses – such as e-mail, print and save – through paid options up to and including large-scale corporate reprints of excerpts, full articles or photos.
ICopyright’s role is unrelated to the AP’s new content registry, announced in late July: http://www.ap.org/pages/about/pressreleases/pr_072309a.html
The AP’s relationship with iCopyright dates to April of last year: http://info.icopyright.com/news_041408_ap.asp
Paul Colford
Director of Media Relations
The Associated Press
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yep, you’re right Scott
http://www.ap.org/pages/about/pressreleases/pr_080309a.html
08/03/2009
Statement:
AP Statement on iCopyright’s Automated Form to License AP Content
The iCopyright form that enables users to license AP content online is drawing new attention this week.
It is an automated form, thus explaining how one blogger got it to charge him for the words of a former president.
As the AP stated more than a year ago, the form is not aimed at bloggers. It is intended to make it easy for people who want to license AP content to do so.
AP partners with iCopyright to automate fulfillment of routine requests for rights to republish AP material, either from AP-hosted sites or member and customer sites carrying AP content. The licensing options vary greatly, from an array of uses – such as e-mail, print and save – through paid options up to and including large-scale corporate reprints of excerpts, full articles or photos.
ICopyright’s role is unrelated to the AP’s new content registry, announced in late July: http://www.ap.org/pages/about/pressreleases/pr_072309a.html
The AP’s relationship with iCopyright dates to April of last year: http://info.icopyright.com/news_041408_ap.asp
Paul Colford
Director of Media Relations
The Associated Press
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I dunno. It sounds more like Grimmelman was jerking around an automated system, doesn’t it? I don’t get the impression there was a person on the other end who saw Jefferson’s words and said, “Hey, we own those!”
Has anyone challenged AP on the 4-word limit, though? A 5-word quote couldn’t possibly end up on the wrong side of Section 107, the Fair Use provision of the Copyright Code.
You might find this article interesting:
Hughes, Justin. “Copyright and Incomplete Historiographies: Of Piracy, Propertization, and Thomas Jefferson.” Southern California Law Review 79.July 2006 (2006): 993-1084.
At p. 16, Hughes makes a fairly good claim that Jefferson isn’t speaking absolutely against intellectual property; instead, he’s pointing out that property systems arise out of man made law rather than natural law, IP most of all.
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