To link or not to link is the question for the Associate Press
The Associate Press (AP) came under fire from last week for serving a take down notice against the Drudge Retort for copyright violations.
It seemed AP wants quotes from 33 to 79 words from the site.
Jeff Jarvis for Buzz Machine posted that AP’s action was calling the pot black.
Wrote Jeff,
This complaint comes from an organization that leaches off original reporting and kills links and credit to the source of that journalism. Yes, it has a right to reproduce reporting from member news organizations. But as I point out here, the AP is hurting original reporting by not crediting and linking to the journalism at its source. We should be operating under an ethic of the link to original reporting; this is an ethic that the AP systematically violates.
Jeff, a few days later, suggested that AP should has proposed a link ethics.
Whenever this blogger cuts a quote from another blog post or online media outlets, this blogger will try her best to link it to the site.
This blogger also limits herself to cutting a paragraph or two, three max, from the source.
However, some Singapore bloggers looked to cut and paste the entire article, citing the source but do not link it back to the source.
Blog.Simplyjean.com is one such blog that has been cutting and pasting the entire article from the straitstimes.com without linking it back to their site.
Simply Jean via kwout
Jean’s argument would most likely be that the link to the article will disappear after two weeks in straitstimes.com.
But should simplyjean .com also follow Jeff’s link ethics and link the article back to straitstimes.com?
Hi there,
Thanks for bringing my attention to this. I once considered linking the original article. But I also realised that, with the exception of “Free Stories” and perhaps “ST Forum”, most of the links return a log-in page since most of the articles on Straits Times are accessible only via subscript (payment subscription, that is, as opposed to RSS =) ).
Of course, paid subscribers will be able to view the articles, so it’s quite a dilemma. Copying and pasting the entire article also has repercussions in IP issues, which I once wrote to the STI about. But their mailbox was either full or the address was invalid. Admittingly, it’s a Pandora’s Box that I am a little afraid to open. If need be, there will be a mass edit to either cut down the article to the point in case or to remove them totally.
I’m not sure if what I am doing is right, but I would like to hear your views.
Cheers.
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