In his Reflections of a Newsosaur blog, Alan Mutter chides the newspaper and publishing industries for devising plans to crack down on those unfairly/illegally using copyrighted material.

Mutter, a former print executive now in Silicon Valley, isn't one of those free-culture advocates who says anything goes.

Rather, he's making a practical observation: The time taken to crack down will not yield a decent return, largely because it's difficult to police and there are few who would be able to pay whatever you'd win in a legal action.

Those driving large traffic and revenue will be smart enough to stay within the U.S. fair use principles editorially --- using snippets of content and linking out to full sources, he predicts.

Here is one snippet as an example: "If the time, trouble and cost of policing content are likely to net only limited amounts of new revenue for print publishers, don’t they have more important things to do?"

The Associated Press, the venerable news agency with resources worldwide, intends to crack down on copyright violators and will try to direct traffic away from sites improperly using its content.

This is a major development in the largely laissez-faire environment in which content is cut and paste with no real accountability. AP is essentially saying it'll pursue those who aren't linking properly and who are taking its material and gaining traffic and revenue without paying.

The New York Times reported later Monday that the move is directed particularly at search engines like Google and Yahoo and aggregators like Huffington Post.

AP chairman Dean Singleton, CEO of MediaNews Group Inc., puts it this way: "We can no longer stand by and watch others walk off with our work under misguided legal theories. We are mad as hell, and we are not going to take it any more."

What is unclear is how it will pursue the offenders, what it will permit sites to use fairly and freely, and what others might do to follow suit. But the implications are substantial for those who have with impunity used AP content to bolster posts or even posted AP content inside their wireframes.

The New York Times' Brian Stelter has summarized the ongoing dispute between those who curate and those who are curated. There is nothing particularly new in his piece, but it is a strong overview (with many star appearances) on the degree to which sites can comfortably (ie, legally) scrape another's work.

The Associated Press and GateHouse Media have each served notice in recent months of their discomfort with the way in which their proprietary content was being used freely elsewhere. While sites cite the "fair use" provisions of U.S. copyright law --- essentially permitting one-time editorial use that gives the audience a good sense of the work created --- others are of the belief that the scraping goes too far in revealing the highlights. It's as if every movie site discussed the most important scene, they argue.

Stelter's piece helps understand the lay of the land.

Vancouver's Terry McBride runs Nettwerk Music Group, home of such artists as Sarah McLachlan and Barenaked Ladies, and he's long been thinking out of the box when it comes to music and copyright in the digital age.
He has blogged in recent days on the emerging value of meta data in music and how value will be brought to music and monetized through the behaviour of fans. While it's a little off the beaten path for the news business, there is an analogy in there.

Conventional media are by now used to blogs hauling in large parts of stories and using them as source material for postings. It's called the "fair use" provision, and frankly, without it all sorts of journalism big and small wouldn't be committed.
But a recent scuffle in the U.S. involving The Associated Press is an indication of some new testiness in this area. Last week The AP warned The Drudge Retort (not to be confused with The Drudge Report) that it was overstepping AP's copyright  (in one case, by using 79 words) on seven of its posts.
The move sent a lot of bloggers into a new sphere of outrage and indignation, and this weekend The AP backed down (although it still wants the seven postings changed) and suggested it's going to get to work on a policy to govern the ground.
This is a significant move, in that it could start to establish boundaries upon which conventional organizations (and, they would hope, the courts) define the legal protection of their copyrighted material. In turn, that could create new guides for permissible use of content by others.

The Conservative government has introduced amendments to copyright legislation that balance consumer and creator interests but clearly side with industries most affected by free downloading.
Being caught with an illegal download would result in a $500 fine (although being caught sharing those files is another matter, and could propel some interesting cases). While it will be legal to time-shift content with PVRs, it would be illegal to use circumventing devices to skirt broadcasters who flag programming to avoid time-shifting. And, notably, there are no provision forcing ISPs to take down or block illegal material.
Now, the legislation is simply in the introductory stage. It has to be reviewed by a House of Commons committee and then given third and final reading, before going to the Senate for review. With an election looming, it is questionable if this bill will get that far in time for an election, or if there will be another wave of legislation after one.