Since the AP is going after bloggers for quoting snippets from their articles, I’ve decided to just stop using them. Here’s a breakdown of their charges currently which is way more restrictive than the current law allows. Did you know they charge for quoting their stories after the first 5 words? And if they don’t like what you say, they can terminate your right to use it.
Well, if they want to charge for their stories, then I’ll just get my news from some other source. There’s plenty of them out there. I could always quote from the BBC and other foreign news services like Reuters (though Reuters is annoyingly biased) or from CNN and FoxNews. Or I can just paraphrase the article, as long as I don’t plagiarize, I think I will be safe from persecution.
AP really stepped in it this time, I’m not the only one who will think twice before using them as a source:

on any AP story we find that is worthy of a post, we’ll now actively search for alternative sources to receive the link. We won’t totally rule out linking to the AP, but since it seems so against getting traffic from other sites, it will now be a link of last resort. It makes you wonder if the news organizations who license AP content (the ones who are the actual beneficiaries of these links) are going to start telling the AP to knock it off.