Recently in Fair use Category

It's all over the place — what The Associated Press is doing, supposedly in response to members wanting it to crack down on bloggers using AP stories. Let's begin at BoingBoing:

In the name of "defin[ing] clear standards as to how much of its articles and broadcasts bloggers and Web sites can excerpt" the Associated Press is now selling "quotation licenses" that allow bloggers, journallers, and people who forward quotations from articles to co-workers to quote their articles. The licenses start at $12.50 for quotations of 5-25 words. The licensing system exhorts you to snitch on people who publish without paying the blood-money, offering up to $1 million in reward money (they also think that "fair use" — the right to copy without permission — means "Contact the owner of the work to be sure you are covered under fair use.").

Think BoingBoing wants to charge me for that quote? No, because I'm linking back to them, giving them credit, and generally helping promote their site at no cost to them.

The thing about the snitches — if anything's over the top, that most certainly is.

BoingBoing got much of its info from this Making Light post. which in turn got its information from The Carpetbagger Report, which got its information from the good ol' New York Times.