AP to talk with Blogging Group

The AP is reporting, that The Associated Press, plans to meet this week with a bloggers' group to help form guidelines under which AP news stories could be quoted online.This isfollowing criticism from bloggers over an AP assertion of copyright.


The AP will talk with the Media Bloggers Association, in an effort to create standards for online use of AP stories by bloggers . This effort would protect AP content without discouraging bloggers from legitimately quoting from it.


Blogger have been upset with the AP for going after a small bloggers whom they thought appeared to be engaging in a legally permissible and widely practiced activity protected under "fair use" provisions of copyright law.

In response, the AP indicated it would seek to create guidelines .

Michael Arrington wrote on his TechCrunch blog that AP "doesn't get to make its own rules about how its content is used, if those rules are stricter than the law allows."

The AP says that they are reconsidering how and when to send legal notices to bloggers in hopes of giving them "a little more leeway."

Short quotations of copyrighted material are allowed under the "fair use" provision of copyright law. .