Recently, Associated Press set up
a payment scheme where it wants bloggers and citizen journalists to pay every time they quote an AP article. AP says it's copyright infringement when bloggers quote their work, while bloggers say it falls under Fair Use in copyright law.
The issue has been covered extensively on DigitalJournal.com (Sue D. wrote about it
here and
here) and the Harvard Citizen Media Project
offers its advice to bloggers here.
Now, popular Web 2.0/start-up blog TechCrunch is fighting back demanding AP pay it for quoting TechCrunch without permission.
The post on TechCrunch is sure to induce a bit of laughter, as blog owner Michael Arrington is trying to make a point about how ridiculous AP's payment-for-quotes stance is.
Arrington says AP quoted 22 words from one of his blog's posts, so he will be sending AP a bill for $12.50 (that is what they would charge a blogger who quoted the same number of AP words).
This whole situation is out of control, and AP certainly has opened an enormous can of worms with this issue. The back-payments they could owe other bloggers, I suspect, will become a massive issue for the organization. As Sue D. mentions in one of her articles, one blogger is owed more than $130,000 under AP's payment scheme.
I think it's just the beginning for AP and recovering from this monumental PR disaster will require nothing short of a miracle.
