A news item on Techmeme caught my eye, so I clicked to read it.

“Oregon sues Oracle over failed health care website,” the headline said, linking to a report by the Associated Press about a lawsuit against Oracle filed by the US state of Oregon alleging some pretty serious malfeasance on Oracle’s part over a health care website.

It’s the kind of business story that interests me, and one I tend to share on Twitter as some of my community there might also be interested in it. It’s also the kind of thing I might share in my Flipboard magazine – which, if I choose, can also re-share that share across Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn and Facebook – to bring it to a wider audience. It might even become a news item or discussion topic for the weekly business podcast I co-host.

Much depends on the topic, who it’s about, which publication it’s in, how credible and timely it is, how well presented the story is, etc.

I don’t especially seek out stories or reports by the AP. Yet I encounter AP reports a lot, either direct reports filed by an AP journalist like this one, or as a newswire story reported in another online publication.

In whatever case, as with all sharing of content published online by others, I’m mindful of copyright.

But get a load of the AP’s copyright statement at the foot of this story (and in every story on their website).

The yellow highlight in the screenshot is my emphasis of the off-putting wording:

© 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

I’m not a lawyer, but that looks to me like the AP won’t allow the kind of sharing I do across social networks, eg, retweeting a link to their story, never mind any content from it. Wouldn’t that be regarded as “broadcasting”?

That’s not what they intend, surely?

Well, take a look at the terms of use referenced in the full footer statement, in particular numbers 5 and 6:

(Number 6 even mentions ‘fax’ which makes me think this wording was written in the command-and-control heyday of the mid- to late-90s and unchanged since.)

I’d say number 5 makes it clear that this is what they intend. Even retweeting a link on Twitter isn’t something they’d like you to do by the looks of it:

5. Except as provided in this agreement, you may not copy, reproduce, publish, transmit, transfer, sell, rent, modify, create derivative works from, distribute, repost, perform, display, or in any way commercially exploit the Materials carried on this site, nor may you infringe upon any of the copyrights or other intellectual property rights contained in the Materials. You may not remove or alter, nor cause to be removed or altered, any copyright, trademark, or other proprietary notices or visual marks and logos from the Materials.

I suppose the key words here are “commercially exploit” which I guess means making money from the AP’s intellectual property without permission, recognizing their rights or paying them for usage.

Yet surely there are better ways in communicating such intent that don’t leave you feeling that whatever you do to amplify their story under the fair use or fair dealing aspects of copyright laws, you should probably look over your shoulder just in case you see a lawyer bearing down on you.

I contrast this unfriendly attitude with that of an arch-competitor of the AP – Reuters.

Reuters actively encourages you to share its content!

Look at this same story, for instance, as reported by Reuters on its website – with social share buttons arrayed at the top:

Not only that, the footer in the story repeats those social share buttons and also tells you how many of your friends have recommended the story on Facebook and/or urges you to be the first to do so, as it does in every news story on the Reuters website.

And not a copyright notice or terms of use link anywhere except among general site links in a specific area at the very bottom of the website, each of which is written in far less draconian language. Much more concise and contemporary, too.

Comparing these two different approaches to creating and publishing copyrighted content that others inevitably would wish to share, which one gives you confidence in sharing with your social online communities? Which one behaves like trusting you is the default rather than the other way around? At a time of continuing evolution of mainstream media and how people use online to get, consume and share their news, which one appears equally confident in making content available online that will be shared and so actively encourages it?

In essence, which one is the publisher who gets it about content-sharing, trends, behaviours and the social web?

I know which one gives me that confidence.

PS: As it happens, I shared the AP story on Google+ as I wanted to highlight some of the text that I couldn’t do in Twitter (more than 140 characters). Plus my community there is, broadly, more tech-oriented and so I thought I might get some interesting comments back. None yet though…