Associated Press recently said that excerpts from its stories should not be used by bloggers unless there was specific commentary about the excerpt. Dan Farber sums things up nicely here: Welcome to the Web refactory, AP
The AP or any other source of so-called original content that is built partly on preexisting content easily accessible on the Internet can either participate in the Web refactory and live with the fuzziness, or become a pariah.
Also, there’s an interesting wrinkle here. AP is owned by 1500 daily newspapers. What if each daily newspaper allows excerpts and links? Will AP change its syndication rules with its owners? Will its owners be happy with such a policy since it could decrease traffic to their online sites?
How about news aggregators such as Google News? They take the headline and first paragraph of a news story without even blogging anything about it. Interestingly, Google does have a financial deal with AP so maybe other news aggregators will get a call from AP’s lawyers?
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