First it was the EU looking at passing a law that would require bloggers to disclose their identity and affiliation. Now the AP is looking to enforce a new license that would require payments when a blogger puts an excerpt from an AP article in their blog.  My friend Kevin McLaughlin blogged on this over at Channel Web blog today. Basically the AP says that if you excerpt more than 5 words you need to start paying them fees.  Kevin reached out to me and I gave him my views on this one.

I think that it is a really short sighted move by the AP.  First of all it shows they really don't understand blogging.  Blogging is about taking an idea which often comes from another source and putting the bloggers own spin and ideas behind it. In this way topics are built on one blog at a time with each blogger adding a bit more to the conversation. Each additional blog on topic enriches those blogs and articles that preceded it.  As I said in the Channel Web article, it is like a jazz musician playing a riff on top of a line already laid down.

In real terms blogging on the AP content will only generate more views and interest in the AP content.  AP is just a dinosaur with this type of view and will soon go the way of dinosaurs if they try to enforce this. In the meantime bloggers can talk about an AP article, but don't link to it and don't excerpt from it. I suspect that the next thing is we will have a replay of the inbound links litigation we had 8 years ago.  In the meantime blogging will continue to march on with AP or not.