Thursday, June 19, 2008

AP's Red Flag About Copyright In The Blogosphere

The AP announced that it expects bloggers to comply with copyright laws when quoting from the news source. The announcement stems from the allegation that the Drudge Report "reproduced" parts of AP articles rather than "referenced" it.

In principle, the AP is right about raising a red flag about copyright issues. Many cybercitizens, including myself, freely comment on the news. And during this process, some may inadvertently copy and paste more than allowed, without interpreting the content for their readers.

Yet the big question is, how AP will monitor and track all this activity. Would they have claimed the Drudge Report incident if it weren't for the blog's prominence? Perhaps we'll see more cases from ordinary cybercitizens, similar to the early days of online music piracy issues.

No comments: