AP's Pandora Box: What if Public Relations Companies Adopt the Same Approach?

By Tom Foremski - June 24, 2008

Associated Press is trying to gain control over how others use its content. And it can, because "fair use" has no legal precedent, at least so far.

Does "fair use" protect five words as AP offers or does it cover as much as anyone wants to quote?

Because AP has raised this issue and it has taken legal steps towards defining this issue, we might very soon get a legal precedent on how much content can be quoted by others without violating copyright.

This could become a Pandora's box and one that should have been kept closed.

Consider this: A company releases a news release but it retains the copyright. You can only use the content if you have the approval of the copyright owner.

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By Tom Foremski - June 24, 2008 | Permalink | Comment | Category: PR Watch
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Comments (8)

A copyright battle over press releases? That would be something. Seems antithetical to the point of a press release. New question: Should a press release be worthy of copyright protection in the first place?


Most tech companies would infringe on each other's copyrighted materials -- all their releases sound the same.


Am I missing something? I don't understand why a practitioner would object to a reporter repeating the words of a press release.


I dropped into comments to say just what Tiffany has already said. Since the whole idea of a press release (social or otherwise) is to get people to either write about it or publish it wholesale, why would anybody copyright it? The idea strikes me as completely counterintuitive.


Tom Foremski:

What if you wanted to control the way the copy is used? Copyright permission would be granted only by specific approval.


james:

Another longterm effect may be that PR folk take stories (particularly exclusives) to non-AP journalists and bloggers. If people can't repurpose, copy, or quote the article freely, the PR value goes down. Haven't seen this angle talked about much on the interwebs, but the issue is already beginning to enter discussions in-house and with clients.

They may retain breaking events (for a while -athough that's one area where citizen journalism has an edge), but sources may dry up a bit for deeper stories. Good for Reuters and others...

Many layers to the onion..


Tom Foremski:

James: Excellent point...


James' comment gets to the heart of the matter. The value of getting the word out via a particular channel diminishes if that channel has severe restrictions on the echo effect.

If you score a coup and get a major mention of your company's efforts in an AP story, but no one outside of an AP-subscribing news outlet talks about the story, the impact is greatly reduced.

Someone wants to mention your company during a presentation at a conference, but leaves it out because their only source is an AP article...

At some point the PR focus shifts slightly away from getting newsworthy information to AP, and toward getting news to other sources.


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