WTF is the AP doing to Fair Use??

Read the whole article at The Wild Hunt.

But now the Associated Press would want me to pay them $50 in order to quote them quoting me.

"In the name of "defin[ing] clear standards as to how much of its articles and broadcasts bloggers and Web sites can excerpt" the Associated Press is now selling "quotation licenses" that allow bloggers, journallers, and people who forward quotations from articles to co-workers to quote their articles. The licenses start at $12.50 for quotations of 5-25 words. The licensing system exhorts you to snitch on people who publish without paying the blood-money, offering up to $1 million in reward money (they also think that "fair use" -- the right to copy without permission -- means "Contact the owner of the work to be sure you are covered under fair use.")."

Not surprisingly, this new policy has shocked and angered the blogging community, and the AP is now sitting down with the Media Bloggers Association in order to negotiate some guidelines. However, any deal struck may well fly in the face of our already established rights and freedoms as journalists.

"I suggest it’s better described as yet another attempt by a big media company to replace the established legal and social order with with a system of private law (the very definition of the word “privilege”) in which a few private organizations get to dictate to the rest of society what the rules will be."

I personally think this payment scam is a horrible idea by the AP which flies in the face of established copyright law. Even worse, if you do pay them, you aren't allowed to criticize AP reporting!