Last week, the Associated Press sent DMCA takedown notices to the Drudge Retort, a user-submitted news aggregator. Drudge Retort featured seven A.P. articles with headlines (often user-generated, not original), less than 100 word quotes, and a link to the original article which, according to the A.P.’s letter, did not fall under fair use.

The use is not fair use simply because the work copied happened to be a news article and that the use is of the headline and the first few sentences only. This is a misunderstanding of the doctrine of “fair use.” AP considers taking the headline and lede of a story without a proper license to be an infringement of its copyrights, and additionally constitutes “hot news” misappropriation.

The blogosphere spent the weekend lambasting the A.P. for overstepping the bounds of copyrights. The A.P.’s VP and Director of Strategy Jim Kennedy answered with a copy and paste job on dozens of blogs (I wonder who owns those comments):

We get concerned, however, when we feel the use is more reproduction than reference, or when others are encouraged to cut and paste. That’s not good for original content creators; nor is it consistent with the link-based culture of the Internet that bloggers have cultivated so well.

To further remedy the backlash, the A.P. announced today a set of guidelines for bloggers in linking to A.P. articles.

The Associated Press has been reliably archaic in evolving to the internet age. The A.P. pressured Google over its News search engine, eventually convincing Google to pay the A.P. for its stories and pictures. Google had no obligation to pay the A.P. and likely led to other newspapers suing Google for their share and encouraging the A.P. to think it can completely control its content.

Today’s New York Times quoted Kennedy recognizing their initial approach to blogs might have been “heavy-handed.” A.P. executives met to revise their strategy which will likely appear in their usage guidelines. Bloggers, just like mainstream news sources (including the A.P.), won’t accept guidelines on how to use content. The A.P. does not get to set special rules on its content, same as the MLB and ABC and any other organization. The point of fair use is that it doesn’t require permission from the copyright holder. The more companies accept these restrictions, the more other organizations will try to expand the power of their copyrights.

A.P.’s recent moves will inspire bloggers to avoid A.P. stories, instead leading traffic to competitors who want free promotion. The result will be a less influential A.P. as other news services embrace internet technology instead of fight it.