The Associated Press doesn't want you to reproduce their headlines or post an except from one of their articles, even if you link to the source. Unless you pay them first, of course.
I fundamentally disagree with this stance by the AP. Article citation with links to the source article is fundamental to what we bloggers do. It's fundamental to what the world wide web has become. The AP hasn't read their own stories on the horrors of DRM in music, because they're going to add DRM to their news articles.
The Associated Press Board of Directors today directed The Associated Press to create a news registry that will tag and track all AP content online to assure compliance with terms of use. The system will register key identifying information about each piece of content that AP distributes as well as the terms of use of that content, and employ a built-in beacon to notify AP about how the content is used.
This very blog entry would apparently trigger this magic registry and I'll get some sort of virtual wrist slap for not licensing the above paragraph first. The AP thinks it can suddenly go to war against linking on the web. The AP is mad.
Or is there a method to the madness? The war against linking is so ludicrous, I think it's a clever ploy to get more web publishers to link to AP articles. How many bloggers do you think will link to AP articles more than ever now that they're attempting to DRM the sucker?
