4 August 2009 · associated press, digital rights management, freedom, licensing

The recently-publicized Associated Press approach to copyrighting the news includes such stupidities as

• Charging people to use their own words, and
  
• Attempting to charge for the use of information in the public domain

To this stupidity it appears that through the inadequacies of the system they have chosen to use for licensing we can now add

• Charging people for things that were never said:

This does raise some interesting questions, however. Since I now have a license (purchased for $12.50) from Associated Press to quote these words, are they going to sue me for defamation (against which my defense would be "fair comment") or will they instead fall back on their terms of use, which does not allow me to use licensed material in a way "derogatory to Publisher"?

Given the huge popularity of this blog (not) I suspect this one will sneak under their radar, but if it doesn't (and assuming I am neither subjected to a gag order nor rubbed out by hired gorillas) I shall report back.

UPDATE: About five hours later I received a refund on the grounds that the quoted material was not part of the referenced article:
So it appears that the system isn't quite as asinine as it might at first seem. But Associated Press still need to get a clue, I think.