More and more internet bloggers are finding stories and posting them all over the net. Many rewrite the stories and many may copy the story and credit the publisher. The AP is about to meet with Robert Cox, president of Media Bloggers Association. This meeting comes after the AP sent a legal notice to a blogger who made a peridy of the Drudge Report, called the DRudge Retort.
The net is still in the early years and many laws haven't yet been made to protect net copyright. There are a few folks out there that think the reform of blogging and news information will discourage blogging and hurt the business. I know for sure that I will be watching my steps on my blogs and attribute stories the best I can. I have one blog where I take strange news stories and rewrite them in my own way but I always research the story and give the most reliable information. I have found that many stories will be different from news station to news station, with obvious errors in the reporting. I have even mailed fox news a few times to tell them that they had incorrect information in a few stores, guess what they said,nothing. Fox did not even mail me back, I was a bit hurt.
But anyway, getting a little side-tracked! So The AP has decided to find some of the small guys and bring legal action against them for copyright violation. I could see them trying to sue if a story is in the same wording and same style. I can not see them proving that someone ever got the story from them. Not only do thousands of news agencies gets stories from the AP, but there are other news sources all over. It would be very hard to prove that someone copied a story unless it was word for word. Also someone might find a story on the AP and look it up somewhere else and copy the story from another source. Sure you can use an IP number to track someone's movement, but how can you really prove it?
That is just the start of a few questions in copyright issues. What about the fashion that a blog is hosted? For example, you may host at blogger or another blogging platform and the AP would have to contact the company. What if you hosted on a private server and your Domain was private also, seems like it could be a tough situation. In a few weeks I am sure the net will be buzzing about the meeting that the AP will have.
The AP does say that they have will be easy on bloggers and give them a chance before any legal action happens. The main point is context and how bloggers can take a story out of context. Another thing I have noticed is how a story can change, like in a law case! You really have to stay on top of stories and give proper information. Not only does bloggers build a stronger internet business but they also help the networks by getting the stories out to the world. Maybe one day there will be a happy coexistence between the news wires and the blog lines.
More coming soon, until then blog hard!
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