While stumbling around on the Net this evening, I came across this blog post from a year ago, which states that third parties need to pay the Associated Press in order to quote the AP. According to the post, “The Associated Press is now selling “quotation licenses” that allow bloggers, journallers, and people who forward quotations from articles to co-workers to quote their articles. The licenses start at $12.50 for quotations of 5-25 words.”
Moreover, according to the blog, the AP encourages folks to “snitch” on writers who quote the AP without a license to do so by offering up to $1 million in reward money for tattlers.
Could this be true? I’ve found references here, here, and here, but not on the AP Web site. And if it were the case that writers have to pay to quote the AP, how could this change to intellectual property rights have slipped past me?
Now, it’s common knowledge that the AP owns the intellectual property rights to stories and photographs that their writers and photographers take. However, paying to quote the AP? That sounds outlandish.
Tags: ap guidelines, intellectual property and blogging, legal issues facing writers, writing for the web