Confusing, isn’t it? So here’s the deal; The Associated Press (AP) notes that it’s content, including words and images from it’s site, is copyrighted material, and not (normally) distrubted under the widly used Creative Commons act. Thus, if you want to use a snippet, even a one line sentence, from the AP website on one of their articles, you’re suppose to pay AP for it’s use. Heck, they even have a chart showing how much you should send them a check for, depending on how much content you “borrow”. So on June 30th, when Woot’s CEO Matt Rudledge sent out a hilarious email to it’s staff about the acquisition by Amazon, AP decided to report on it. The only problem was that AP quoted Woot’s site in reference to the email, and didn’t pay Woot for using it’s content that the AP is so strict about. So what did Woot do? Sent them a bill, of course.

“The AP, we can’t thank you enough for looking our way. You see, when we showed off our good news on Wednesday afternoon, we expected we’d get a little bit of attention. But when we found your little newsy thing you do, we couldn’t help but notice something important. And that something is this: you printed our web content in your article! The web content that came from our blog! Why, isn’t that the very thing you’ve previously told nu-media bloggers they’re not supposed to do?

So, The AP, here we are. Just to be fair about this, we’ve used your very own pricing scheme to calculate how much you owe us. By looking through the link above, and comparing your post with our original letter, we’ve figured you owe us roughly $17.50 for the content you borrowed from our blog post, which, by the way, we worked very very hard to create. But, hey. We’re all friends here. And invoicing is such a hassle in today’s paperless society, are we right? How about this: instead of cutting us a check for the web content you liberated from our site, all you’ll need to do is show us your email receipt from today’s two pack of Sennheiser MX400 In-Ear Headphones, and we’ll call it even.”

Free speech is over-rated anyway. On that note, feel free to use our content however you want, we’re not greedy, but feel free to send us beer. We like beer.

Source: AP, Woot!