We've seen everyone from the World News Association to a group of Belgian newspapers strike out at Google News for "stealing" their content by excerpting and linking to it. Now it's the AP newswire's turn -- but it's going after what amounts to a group news blog. Associated Press has apparently filed several DMCA takedown requests against a site called Drudge Retort, alleging that several items excerpted on the site constitute an infringement of copyright and "a misappropriation of 'hot news' under New York State law."

Not to be confused with the much more famous news site The Drudge Report, the Drudge Retort was set up about 10 years ago as an alternative to the right-wing Drudge Report by writer and programmer Rogers Cadenhead. He doesn't post the items, however -- the site is effectively a group blog, where members can post links and comments.

The AP case is similar to a number of other cases the agency has launched over the past year or so, including one against the headline news service Moreover, and another against a service called All Headline News. But those cases involve companies whose sole business is distributing headline news to a variety of other sites -- something the AP theoretically has an interest in curbing. The Drudge Retort isn't a commercial entity (although it does have some ads).

Cadenhead says he believes that the short excerpts, which are linked to the original article -- effectively the same thing that Google News does -- constitute "fair use" and are therefore exempt from copyright rules. The AP disagrees, however, judging by the comments made in a letter to Cadenhead, in which the agency's lawyer said: "Please note that contrary to your assertion, AP considers that the Drudge Retort users' use of AP content does not fall within the parameters of fair use. The use is not fair use simply because the work copied happened to be a news article and that the use is of the headline and the first few sentences only."

Others disagree: Salon.com founder Scott Rosenberg says on his blog that the AP is almost certainly wrong, and that the use at Drudge Retort would likely meet some or all of the five factors that are taken into account when the 'fair use' principle is applied by the courts.

Note:

If you're wondering about the curious phrase "misappropriation of 'hot news'," it refers to a common law principle that was defined by the U.S. Supreme Court almost a century ago, in 1918 -- after the Associated Press sued a competing news agency (started by publishing legend William Randolph Hearst) for stealing its wire reports about the Great War. More details here if you're interested.

Update:

Jim Kennedy, a vice-president and director of strategy for AP, sent a statement out about the Drudge Retort situation:

"The AP wants to fill in some facts and perspective on its recent actions with the Drudge Retort, and also reassure those in the blogosphere about AP's view of these situations. Yes, indeed, we are trying to protect our intellectual property online, as most news and content creators are around the world. But our interests in that regard extend only to instances that go beyond brief references and direct links to our coverage.

The Associated Press encourages the engagement of bloggers -- large and small -- in the news conversation of the day. Some of the largest blogs are licensed to display AP stories in full on a regular basis. We genuinely value and encourage referring links to our coverage, and even offer RSS feeds from www.ap.org, as do many of our licensed customers.

We get concerned, however, when we feel the use is more reproduction than reference, or when others are encouraged to cut and paste. That's not good for original content creators; nor is it consistent with the link-based culture of the Internet that bloggers have cultivated so well.

In this particular case, we have had direct and helpful communication with the site in question, focusing only on these issues.

So, let's be clear: Bloggers are an indispensable part of the new ecosystem, but Jeff Jarvis' call for widespread reproduction of wholesale stories is out of synch with the environment he himself helped develop. There are many ways to inspire conversation about the news without misappropriating the content of original creators, whether they are the AP or fellow bloggers.