farmboy - 2:52 am on Jul 26, 2009 (gmt 0)

If the AP had broken the story that Michael Jackson died would they really expect nobody to write about it since they broke the story? c'mon...

I am not here to defend the AP, but I think that misses the point.

If they broke the story with an article that Michael Jackson died, there is nothing wrong with bloggers and others writing, "apparently Michael Jackson has died, here's a link to an article with details." That would drive people to the article and drive advertising revenue for the site.

The problem is when a blogger, for example, copies the AP written/researched/fact-checked article and puts it on his blog. This uses the work effort of the AP without the AP getting the traffic and thus no revenue.

The snippet thing is an in-between area. Guidelines on the US Copyright office site clearly indicate someone shouldn't copy and paste so much of the article that a person wouldn't need to visit the original site to get the full context.

FarmBoy