The Associated Press is going to war against all websites and bloggers who use any part of its work, even small snippets, and it is publicly threatening a barrage of lawsuits. The AP’s threats are even aimed at search engines.

If the AP is successful, and they clearly believe they will be, then the Internet will be changed as we know it. Linking (with snippets or not) to the content of others could become a permission based concept where one only links (and quotes) after they have received the appropriate approval.

This battle is starting to remind me of the plague of RIAA suits against music downloaders.   It seems to me that the AP is going to need to live with the legitimate exception of “fair use.”  I realize that there are many abuses out there–I’ve seen blogs cutting and pasting entire news articles without any attempt at meaningful comment.   On the other hand, I’ve seen many sites making legitimate comment on news articles that really do fall within the fair use exception.

We’ll be keeping an eye on this issue as it develops.