Kia's World

Link here:

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.

Yeah, you heard right.  In the past, quotes have always been deemed free, fair game.  Now AP expects us to pay for the privilege.  The fee table is:

5-25 words: $12.50

26-50 words: $17.50

51-100 words: $25.00

101-250 words: $50.00

251+ words: $100.00

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.").

*headdesk*  And now for the best bit:

If you pay to quote the AP, but you offend the AP in so doing, the AP "reserves the right to terminate this Agreement at any time if Publisher or its agents finds Your use of the licensed Content to be offensive and/or damaging to Publisher's reputation."

In other words, not only do we have to pay for the privilege of quoting AP, but we're only allowed to do it if we say nice things about them.  Censorship, anyone?

The people pushing for this stuff are not well-meaning, and they are not interested in making life better for artists, writers, or any other kind of individual creators. They are would-be aristocrats who fully intend to return us to a society of orders and classes, and they’re using so-called “intellectual property” law as a tool with which to do it. Whether or not you have ever personally taped a TV show or written a blog post, if you think you’re going to wind up on top in the sort of world these people are working to build, you are out of your mind.

So let's see.  If this article had been posted by AP, then I would owe them... $50.00!  Not to mention the other articles that have gone up on the Kia site.  That is, if AP hadn't revoked my "quotation license" already for not giving their news a positive spin.  If these guys had their way, the Bill of Rights would have been written with a disclaimer.