Why I Won’t Pay The AP One Red Cent

Recently, the AP decided to get all legal on the bloggers over at The Drudge Retort and demanded that content containing AP reporting be taking down, citing Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The content in question ranged from between 17 and 79 words (yes, that’s it), and the AP apparently thinks the The Drudge Retort’s posts violated their copyright. Not only that, they wanted something a commenter had posted taken down. Yes, a commenter who had quoted an AP story. Obviously, this has caused an uproar in the blogosphere about whether or not quoting pieces of other people’s content and then citing where you got it is indeed “fair use.” And guess which side bloggers are coming down on. The AP recognized they may have been a little hasty to get legal and decided to regroup and offered a way for bloggers to excerpt content and pay for it. Here are the terms… That’s right. If you want to use 5 words from the AP, you h...