AP Takes on the Blogosphere

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A site called the Drudge Retort, a liberal answer to the Drudge Report, was ordered by the Associated Press (AP) to cease and desist using snippets of AP articles in its own articles this past week.

Drudge II complied, but objected that copyright law permits the "fair use" of copyrighted material, in limited portions, for scholarly and academic purposes.

I doubt I’d consider either Drudge I or Drudge II scholarly or academic, but I defend their right to quote from published sources and comment on them.  This is the meaning, to me, of a free press.  I do it all the time here and on my other blogs.

Anyway, a spat ensued, and eventually AP backed away from its legal threat and said the organization "needed to rethink" matters.

What really galled AP, from what I can determine from reading between the lines, is that Drudge and other sites were using the quotations as tie-ins to advertising.

If that’s the case, then AP has a good argument. 

Categories: Grammar Sucks

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