Excellent post on the Associated Press (AP) move to charge bloggers fees for what appears to be legitimate fair use quotes:
Lauredhel at Larvatus Prodeo.
Of course when the mainstream media takes a breaking news story straight from a blog and syndication has it turning up on multiple newspaper sites (eg., a North Coast Voices blog entry posted at 00.15am AEST on 12 June 2008 about Trujillo's legal letter to Wikipedia) one doesn't actually see them jumping up and down with glee at getting a story for only the effort of rewording the original post and making the odd 'phone call, but I'm sure that editors love such low-cost articles.
The majority of Australian blogs at least acknowledge where their information is sourced from and, for the most part, try not to breach any copyright which might be thought to exist.
I agree with Lauredhel - AP is trawling for increased revenue.
Bucket rating for Associated Press:
Postscript
AP has a history of asserting an incredibly broad definition of copyright.
In 2003 it sent a Cease and Desist letter (found at Chilling Effects) which read in part:
Therefore, any use of AP content on your Internet site, whether verbatim, rewritten or simply as a source for information contained in another story, can infringe AP's copyright, and other legal rights....
AP demands that you remove any and all AP content from your Internet site, including any archives, as well as from any site that mirrors or caches your site, that you cease and desist all use of AP copy -- whether verbatim or rewritten -- as well as all use of the facts contained in AP material, and that you confirm for me that you have done so within fifteen days from the date of this letter.
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