So, the AP has in the past made a big deal about holding on to the rights to every tiny little bit of what they right (essentially denying that fair use even exists).
Who better than those snarky peeps at Woot to call them on the implications of such a scheme?
So, The AP, here we are. Just to be fair about this, we’ve used your very own pricing scheme to calculate how much you owe us. By looking through the link above, and comparing your post with our original letter, we’ve figured you owe us roughly $17.50 for the content you borrowed from our blog post, which, by the way, we worked very very hard to create.
One might argue, I suppose, that somehow the material produced by “the media” is different from what the rest of us produce. While certainly such a scheme could be implemented, it hardly seems fair. More importantly at the moment, of course, copyright law makes no such distinction (even if some have attempted to embrace/extend the so-called “hot news” doctrine to create the potential basis for such a distinction).
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