AP: Accusatory and Patronizing

As an editor and publisher, I spent part of my working life dealing with copyright infringement and fair use, so it's fascinating to find the Associated Press today in a fumbling effort to limit use of its content by bloggers.

To start, no one's work should be redistributed at random, but that's hardly what bloggers do in reproducing, almost always with attribution, portions of the news that AP publishes and commenting on it, almost always with links to the source of the material.

In the case chosen to set an example, the AP leaned on the satirical Drudge Retort over seven items containing quotations ranging from 39 to 79 words, hardly a wholesale lifting, leading to the suspicion that the news syndicate was more upset by the appropriator's tone than the "theft."

That's less a defense of copyrighted material than the act of a would-be censor.

“We are not trying to sue bloggers,” its "strategy director" says. “That would be the rough equivalent of suing grandma and the kids for stealing music. That is not what we are trying to do.”

That's adding insult to insult. Bloggers may want avoid using AP stuff--there are so many other news sources from which to steal our pathetic little music.