The DMCA copyright battle between the Associated Press and the Drudge Retort took place two years ago, but Woot CEO Matt Rutledge remembered it in a blog post this week.
Rutledge noticed that when AP covered the sale of his company to Amazon.Com, it quoted from his blog.
The AP, we can't thank you enough for looking our way. You see, when we showed off our good news on Wednesday afternoon, we expected we'd get a little bit of attention. But when we found your little newsy thing you do, we couldn't help but notice something important. And that something is this: you printed our web content in your article! The web content that came from our blog! Why, isn't that the very thing you've previously told nu-media bloggers they’re not supposed to do?
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. ...
We're major digital players now. Don't force us to pass this matter to a collection agency.
In response to Rutledge's mockery, I can only say woot!
Two years ago, when the AP was taking a massive barrage of criticism over using the DMCA to squash the free speech rights of blogs and social news sites, the wire service told Saul Hansell of the New York Times that it was going to produce fair use guidelines for bloggers.
The Associated Press, one of the nation's largest news organizations, said that it will, for the first time, attempt to define clear standards as to how much of its articles and broadcasts bloggers and Web sites can excerpt without infringing on The A.P.'s copyright.
AP never produced those guidelines. My gut feeling at the time was that AP would wait for the issue to blow over and forget it made that promise, because the company sells headline-and-lead syndication packages around the world. Telling people they might possibly be able to quote its stories without getting sued undercuts its business.