Questions for the Associated Press from the Internet

Last week, the Associated Press put the online publishing world on notice about the organization's new "content protection initiative" . AP's idea is to protect news content from misappropriation online. Unfortunately, when I asked to interview someone from AP about the intent, the response from the media relations department was to point to its "AP Intellectual Property site," which had just been "freshened up." Talk about a standard corporate response. But this is an issue that could cause major disputes online, so even if they won't take the following questions, I thought it would be good to get them out into the open.

By now, many have read the quote from AP Chairman Dean Singleton that the organization "can no longer stand by and watch others walk off with our work under misguided legal theories." But that raises the question of what legal theories AP may be employing. I had hoped that the following questions might help tease that out, though it sounds like the organization has taken a leaf from the Dick Cheney school of public relations. (At least they haven't been taking lessons on hunting rifles from him ... I hope.):

• Under what circumstances do you think that someone should be able to quote an AP headline?
• What similarities do you see between headlines and titles, given that titles do not enjoy copyright protection?
• What is the threshold for you to consider that sites not licensing AP work actually "walk off" with it?
• Given that AP uses the word "misappropriation," how does the organization define the term online?
• Do you think that other sites have the fair use right to quote sections of a story? If so, what percentage or word limits do you think should cap the use?
• If you don't think that non-licensing sites have no right to quote sections of an AP story, what controlling legal theory are you using?
• If a site undertakes news analysis, is quoting AP material then fair use?
• If sites cannot quote AP, will AP be willing to give up the right to quote non-licensed material itself?
• Do you think that non-licensing sites have a right to link to AP stories with or without permission?
• If the last answer is no, how do you reconcile that view with the trend of US courts to recognize linking rights online?
• AP says that it will "track content distributed online to determine if it is being legally used." As fair use is a series of guidelines and not a set of hard and fast rules, how can you make such a decision with any degree of confidence in the decisions?
• Why does AP consider itself the "most authoritative" source of news?
• Given AP's views, how can the organization reconcile them with industry suspicions that AP often takes the lead from other news organizations and develops derivative stories without always crediting the original sources?
• Why would AP have the "most authoritative" coverage without restriction when many web sites cover niche areas of news with significant expertise often missing from AP correspondents covering the same areas?
• Given that US copyright actions, of legal necessity, happen in federal court, that such actions are expensive undertakings, and that AP faces significant financial pressures, how can the organization pay for broad legal actions?
• In plain English, what is AP not getting to which it feels entitled? Is the goal to gain additional licensing fees or to try and bring enough pressure to bear to force the closure of many online sources that compete with the newspaper stakeholders of AP?