Last month, a federal district judge in New York City handed down a controversial ruling in the case of Associated Press (AP) v. Meltwater.
The mammoth 91-page decision, a summary judgment in favor of the AP, was a crushing defeat for the news aggregation service Meltwater, which is left considering “options” after the decision was handed down.
But ever since the ruling was handed down there have been questions raised about what the broader implications of this ruling could be. After all, it’s not every day we get a fair use ruling on the issue of online news and aggregation, the impact, theoretically at least, could reach not only other aggregation services, but news search engines and even bloggers that write about news stories first reported by others.
So, what are the potential impacts for bloggers? To find out we first have to take a look at the background of the case, what the judge ruled and why.
On that note, let’s delve into the case itself and find out the issues that’s at the core of the dispute. [Read more…] about What the Meltwater Case Could Mean for Bloggers