The Associated Press has always come down hard on internet sites that inappropriately (in its view) reproduce its content. Now, it’s going to go even further.
AP will now actively monitor news sites looking for evildoers and they sure have been grumpy about this.
Look, it’s always best to just copy a paragraph or so anyway, and add your own ideas. Then the blog post becomes your thoughts, not just eight paragraphs from elsewhere with you saying, “what he said.” Another solution is to rephrase what was said with a link back, like I did with the post right before this one about Sen. Stevens. Then there’s no question about it, because you aren’t quoting anything
Given the enormous amount of news out there, there are almost always other news sources besides AP to link to for a given story anyway.
AP is losing customers, their revenue is down, and so rather than innovate, they are choosing to litigate, a timeworn and losing strategy.