This extends to extracting ANYTHING for literature searches and googling....

Oh, it's not enforcible? I expect them to pay me the same as they expect other people to pay them, even for research and inadvertent extraction of material in e.g. Google searches.

The point isn't "fair use," the point is that the AP, like all the other big-media crusaders for their own privilege, is trying to radically change what we do and don't consider normal, commonsensical practice.

They can certainly make sure it costs more than anyone can pay out of their personal resources, and takes ten years, and look, new legislation.

And, while Patrick is entirely correct about not ending up on top, this sort of thing isn't ever going to end with the current forms of commercial organizations.

It's an emergent property of profit-maximizing corporations to set out to devour the world; the problem can't be fixed while such corporations continue to exist. (Said corporations put a lot of effort into obscuring this simple solution.)

Reliable profit (and some hope of humane behaviour) or maximal profit (and rendering the inconvenient for lard); it ought to be a simple, obvious choice.

I am trying to decide whether cancelling my Sunday paper would be an effective protest, or whether it would just hurt my local paper and not hurt the AP at all.

True. But, this is just one in a long line of steps already taken. In the US, it is now absolutely "legal" to arrest someone without charges, and hold them indefinitely. You can be labeled a "terrorist" for saying anything that those in charge deem "threatening." To what? Their superiority and control over a population that (in their view) basically exists to feed the coffers. And this is legal now in this country. Revolutions have been started for less than this throughout history. Why isn't that happening here? Because the propaganda system in this society, promulgated under the guise of "education," "media," and so on has been so incredibly effective, that there has, up till now, been no need for "communist"-type tactics. (Read Chomsky's early essays for a more in-depth explanation of this.)

In the mid-90s, I went to see Jimmy Carter speak at my college. When asked what the single biggest problem in our society was, his answer was not race relations, environmental issues, or education. It was: class. Regardless of what you think of him, for an ex-president of the US to say that, well, I think there are a lot of revelations to be discovered here.

The history of human society has been the elite vs. the masses. If you think it has *ever* been any different in this so-called "free" society of ours, well, then, I got a bridge I'd like to sell you.

Of course, the legal hassles are almost independent of the legal rightness or wrongness of the actions.

PUBLIC DOMAIN DOCUMENT (ESAD, AP....)

"Article 1 - The Legislative Branch
"Section 8 - Powers of Congress

"The Congress shall have Power...

"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;"

"...."

It does NOT "promote the Progress of Science and use Arts...." for the AP to extort money for quotations of more than four words, NOT does it promote the interest of "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves.." for such extortion (or for life plus 70 year copyright, for that matter... and how long do corporate copyrights last for under the Berne convention intellectual property-never-to-go-public-domain aegis?)

For that matter, since when is the AP the author, as opposed to the person who actually wrote the material, or spoke it, that the AP is distributing?!

I think it's at least a reasonable position to consider "author" to mean "the entity responsible for the creation of the copyrighted work", and in the case of work for hire to consider the hiring organization to be the entity responsible, even if it's not the position one would entirely agree with.

I wish someone would disabuse me of this.

I'd be interested in seeing if the EFF wants to take a swing at AP. I gratefully support them because they're actually willing to dive into the tarpits and wrestle with the dinosaurs whose death throes occasionally threaten us chimps as we sit in the nearby trees pointing, shrieking and throwing feces at their sinking, bloated soon-to-be corpses.

Of course, it's 2008, the courts are populated by far too many Bushie idiots, and who knows. But there are some good grounds on which to challenge this absurdity.

What am I missing?

The first paragraph is usually a short summary of the whole.

And, just checking my local paper, as little as 20 words at the beginning can tell you everything.

AP are being abusive, but I can see them having rather more reason to act than some of their critics think.

I'm genuinely uncertain of the wire service business model. Do papers (etc.) pay a flat fee for usage of whatever comes off the wire, or do they pay by story, or what?

This gambit is ridiculous on its face. Surely they know that no-one's going to pony up money via a web form to quote something in their blogs? And surely they know that blog excerpts do not represent lost revenue for them? So is their entire goal to stop something that isn't hurting them, even though it doesn't gain them anything either?

It all seems weird to me, as well as obnoxious.

But the Weekly World News apparently just went broke. So maybe the lunar extortion market isn't as lucrative as one might think.

(OMG, the "Alexander Abian" Wikipedia entry provides Wall Street Journal citations (!) for Abian's moon-destruction theory. I guess there's a little Weekly World News in every newspaper.)

Note how eager (I am being sarcastic, and put his in explicitly to avoid quoting out of context....) the so-called news media has been to report on any actions of Sen Kuicinich that were anything but things they could heap scorn and distaste upon him for, how eager they have been to report miscues other than humorous not-deleterious ones about any not-about-to-be-dumped actors in the Executive Branch of US Government, how they have mostly buried the two murders of "detainees" tortured to death at Baghram Air Base and deaths and the rapings of minors at Abu Ghraib, and other atrocities perpetrated by US citizens who were either member of the US Government or under contract to the US Government.

"Freedom of the press belongs to those with the presses" -- and with the distribution system to spread their publications and the clout to prevent dissemination of "adverse information" and to discredit the "adverse information," discredit opposotion, calumny opposition, threaten opposition, and gag order opposition.

Just a throwaway idea.

There, that's only four words. You're all welcome to quote me for free.

The codicil at the end of e.g. the AP article at
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25188169/

is oxymoronic, claiming the that article "may not be published...."

What's going on, are they channeling Anton Scalia, one of the vilest crackpots in the USA?!

'Coz I'm good for at least fifteen bucks if you make a good show out of it.

I'm tempted to write it just to push their envelope.

*transfers one meeeeelion dollars to paypal account*

Say, do you have any sharks...?

Let's say I write a book, and the AP publishes a review that quotes more than five words of my precious copyrighted text without signing a licensing agreement with me first. Given their previous behavior, what would their counter-argument be for refusing me my fees? Obviously not fair use, so what then?

CC-noAP

Something like Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic except with SomeCommercial instead of NonCommercial.

It would be great if we could slip a spanner into the works by reporting on real news with such a license attached.

What if the politician sues the AP for copyright infringement, like the Scientologists? Has the AP weakened their ability to defend against these kinds of lawsuits? Obviously the AP prints all sorts of copyrighted material that the owner of the copyright might not want published, and said owners will use every tool in the toolbox to suppress publication. I'm not a lawyer, so I'm genuinely curious:

A) Is "newsworthiness" is covered by fair use? Or is there some special area of law beyond fair use, carved out specifically for news organizations?

B) If "newsworthiness" does stem entirely from fair use, does hypocrisy count? That is, can the AP really say, "fair use for me, but not for thee," and get away with it, in the long term?

Michael, #34: Just to throw another cat among the pigeons, rewriting something in one's own words is the standard avoidance-of-plagiarism technique. I don't see how they can call that unacceptable; teachers all over the country would be up in arms!

Dammit, I was planning a wooly-headed, meandering post on this very topic, running at least half-a-dozen paragraphs to get to that exact conclusion, and you go and boil it all down to one simple, effective sentence!

Now THAT'S America!

I always wondered who had that kind of power over AP.

don delny @36, if he's serious it's going to have to be one meeeeelion eeeeeuros or some other real currency.

It's like this: a significant chunk of traffic to online news comes from links on other sites. And by significant chunk, at least on the small news site I run, I mean "upwards of 90% for some articles, more than 50% for many." Generally speaking, these are links from bloggers and small web sites which post a juicy quote and then say, "Look at the shiny!" or, "Look at the suckage!"

And then all the bloggers' readers go view the article. And the news site then makes money from exposing advertising to that traffic. This is all logical and very basic. Most news sites want links, and want to be quoted.

The AP is in the business of selling syndicated news, yes/no?

This policy will reduce traffic to syndicated AP articles. Which reduces the value of AP news, because on teh intarwebs, traffic=money.

Bwut?

WHY would you want to discourage people from quoting and linking to your content on syndicated sites when you're in the business of selling said content to said syndicates? Huh? Because those customers -- the syndicated sites -- cannot be pleased at all by this. It hurts their bottom line.

On top of that, the quotes and links to AP news help site search rank. A good link from an established, high-PR blog, with topics related to your article, embedded in text, exactly as a blogger would typically do in the process of quoting an article, is worth quite a bit more than $12.50. It's worth four or five times that, and I'm talking real dollars if you auction such links off on certain shady web sites. Because links have a real impact on search rank, which means traffic, which means ad money, they have a real financial value.

Again with the, "Huh?"

I don't get it. And honestly, I don't think the AP gets it either. I really don't understand what they're trying to accomplish.

All you people here in the publishing industry -- how closely does a text have to hew to the original to be considered a quote? Is it even close to the bounds of reason to consider a paraphrasing algorithm to change a text to avoid the letter of the law? (Especially given that AP has to find you before they can sue you, I suppose.)

Just a throwaway idea.

Copyright inheres in the specific arrangement of words. This is why The Sword of Shannara could get published -- the words of the telling were different, though the underlying story was obviously similar to Lord of the Rings.

Paula Lieberman (31):

Michael #22
The fascists responsible for the AP effrontery have put language in that includes banning it being rewritten, even!

The codicil at the end of e.g. the AP article at
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25188169/

is oxymoronic, claiming the that article "may not be published...."

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

This is an iniquitous claim.

Michael Roberts (34):

What I'm wondering is whether such rewriting could plausibly be used as a defense (probably not) and -- much more saliently -- whether such an algorithm could be considered to be making a valid point. (Said point being, I suppose, "Fine, you don't want to be quoted, then we won't!".)

Michael Roberts again (44):

And what the hell is "rewriting", anyway? Are they claiming copyright on the ideas?

I don't think that word means what they think it means. (Although I do think they're claiming something they know full well is not granted by law -- I suspect what we have here is a case of insult and barratry.)

And yet again (45):

GLghLJsdfazaaaaah! Look at these boneheads:

"By accessing the RSS feeds or the XML instructions provided herein, you indicate that you understand and agree to these terms and conditions."

They have a EULA shrinkwrap license on their page!!!1! What incompetent boobs! The page in question is http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/fronts/RSS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME -- I won't link to it even with noref. Bastards. There's nothing I hate worse than rent-seeking behavior from my mental inferiors.

I like Paula's idea: denying the AP the right to quote anything you've written or said unless they pay you for it -- say, $12.50 per five words.

(Come to think of it, it must have taken a greatly twisted mind at AP to come up with this line of bull.)

Measure click-through to the original article at the five-word excerpts and at longer summaries. I expect that click-through would increase for longer quotes up to a certain point and then start to decrease. If bloggers are quoting AP stories at a level that causes more click-through than a five-word excerpt does (and I think they are) that would surely support fair use as commentary on the news.

The results of this test at least seem to be relevant to whether restricting quotation 'promotes the progress of the Useful Arts', unlike, eg, the `means well' test (cf Cory Doctorow vs Ursula LeGuin).

Leva @55, I've worked online software development since before most people knew there was such a thing, and I know exactly what AP is thinking. They're thinking, "Why can't we monetize our reprints?" So they have a neat little (c)-in-a-house icon (I find that icon really cute, actually, and I think I'll use it myself from now on) with a popup that explains their honor system.

And they see that Microsoft has a EULA, so pointy-haired boss says, "We can do that on our feed page, right? Because people shouldn't be stealing our feeds, we pay good money for those bytes!" So they put a EULA on their feed page, written by some clerk at the law office and charged at $400/hr without the actual input of an attorney.

Nobody even thinks about their member sites -- they think their feeds drive all the traffic to their member sites (notice how the links from the RSS feed page all go to randomized hosted member sites? This will make it damned easy to find out all the templates to the member sites, the better to strip out the content, I mean, it would, were anyone so unscrupulous as to contemplate doing such an illegal and heinous thing.)

Chances are, given the poor state of the newspaper industry, their member sites believe this analysis. Trust me on this (nancynall.com is a fount of insight on how "well" newspaper editorial staffs are dealing with the Internet.)

This has committeethink all over it. It's stupid, but nobody ever got fired for buying IBM or for decrying piracy. (Yet.)

Teresa again -- "insult and barratry" is a little (very little) joke. Barratry is what this is, or more specifically, barratry is what it will be if they actually bring suit. I suspect their attorneys know this, and no such case will come to court, which is why they pick on little guys in the hopes of skimming off some settlement cash. Because the penalty for barratry is disbarring -- for the attorney. Not a trivial thing, and one which bloggers would be advised to learn (gosh, that anti-spamming past comes in handy again!)

I am quite happy to hear you suspect my little notion has merit. I so don't have time to do this, but I've noted that if one fails to strike when the Internet iron is hot, one is last minute's news -- thus nonexistent.

I've still used up my play time for today, though (tinkering with the Amazing Toon-o-Matic) and so foiling the eeeeevil plans of the AP shall have to await the morn.

Ta.

"After eight years of incompetence, neglect and failure, we need change," Gore said. "After eight years when our Constitution has been dishonored and disrespected, we need changes."

That's 25 words from Al Gore (hopefully they paid him $62.50) and two from AP. So obviously I may quote it, because Al isn't a fricking JERK.

Ahh, the return to the storied realms of Hidden Knowledge and Secret Law.. (hmm, of course, in this Great Republic of ours, we may already have achieved the latter status...)

It's not fair to blame people, even large groups of them, for the shittiness of corporations. For one thing, it lets corporations off the hook--"Hey, we're just doing what you guys would be doing anyway!" No. Corporations do encourage people to be worse than they otherwise would be. Corporations do enable and, indeed, incentivise behavior far worse than people would pursue on their own. Corporations suck in a multitude of ways beyond the suckitude of mere humans.

Clifton Royston @ 58: "My wife and I have a modified catchphrase we abbreviate as GTMTA: "Greatly twisted minds think alike.""

I'd love to use that, but I don't have a spare $12.50.

I was going to remove the AP from my iGoogle list of RSS feeds by way of protest, but found it wasn't there to begin with.

Th ssctd Prss s th bstn f th ppls rght t knw rnd th wrld.

If I'd quoted it in full, I guess I would have owed AP £7. Almost worth it for the laugh, but I wouldn't want Patrick and Teresa lumbered with the bill. Disemvowelling seemed APpropriate, somehow.

"Associated Press can fuck itself."

- all other quotes, misquotes, rewrites, condensations, edits, paraphrasings, or other usage by the Associated Press of my writings, sayings, or other copyrighted materials of any sort are subject to a per-word rate of $2.50, payable in full before publish. Violation of this copyright agreement will be prosecuted to fullest extent of the law. Perusal of this material indicates agreement with this agreement.
all writings not otherwise indicated are (c) Scott Taylor, 2001 - 2008. All Rights Reserved

*words must be used in toto, and in order. No editing, alteration, obfuscation, or rewording is allowed.

Anyone want to take a stab at making this legally binding, or at least not legally stupid? I'm not anticipating anyone actually wanting to quote me in the funny papers - but, what the hell, at least it's a statement.

In fact, I've looked into their republishing costs before so I know it's not new.

Still, it's ridiculous.

You rewrote the line, however, und das verboten by den Arrogant Petulants ist....

Hmm, I wonder, does Bu$h have a honey deal with AP, such that he will be an official figurehead for them and all this excrement AP is slinging, is designed to continue and extend the obfuscations, lies, misdeamors, and high crimes with all others suspended, barred, impeded, and precluded from having any and all privileges and rights to investigate, reporting, muckrake, charge, refute, defend against, and terminate, with or without!! prejudice, the lies, prevarications, calumnify, misinformation, defamation, and general misdeeds?

[Translation, who and what might be protected by this imperialistic power grab?!]

#63, Craig

That's why I typed that it's oxymoronic!

Perhaps they're getting their legal advice from Mr Mukasey, and messrs. Scalia, Alito, Roberts, and Thomas, with assistance from ex-STASI interrogators and ex-Soviet Stalinist appartchiks who lost their positions when the USSR came unglued.

Class action lawsuit time? Is the EFF listening?

Getting the goons disbarred sounds like a suitable start on cluebat application....

http://www.realtechnews.com/posts/5785

(Thanks Nigel Rowe, #77 )

I think the court of public opinion is going to resolve this one. What a load of maroons.

Especially if they can't demonstrate you used their words on your website without quoting your website.

Scott 73: I was thinking more along the lines of "The Associated Press may not quote me, paraphrase me, or refer to anything I've said or anything anyone else says about me, in any context whatsoever, under any circumstances." It's as valid as the rights they're asserting, which is to say, not.

Michael 86: If they ever do, should the blogger(s) so victimized immediately file a complaint of barratry against the attorneys who sued? Who would they file that with?

"There was supposed to be an Earth-shattering kaboom."

W may have many things in his future, but I feel certain that being paid for his masterful command of the language is not one of them.

Nah, I'd rather keep it legal, and keep from giving people ideas about further undermining fair use, copyright, patent, trademark etc. any further than they already have been.

Me? The more bullshit like this gets thrown at the wall, the closer to being a "burn it all down" no-copyright, trademark, or patent protections at all, "information will be free motherfucker - because I will shoot you in the face* if you try and lock it up" type infoanarchist I become.

The assholes at the RIAA, MPAA, Walt Disney, etc. are their own worst fucking enemy - and at this rate, the backlash against them is going to not only undo the bad shit that has happened in the last thirty years, but a lot of the good stuff that the various copyright, patent and trademark laws and regulations were initially put in to foster

*not actually looking to shoot anyone in the face, honest.

Oh, the stories I'm contractually obligated to refrain from telling...

Suffice to say that some people should thank their lucky stars they're still able to configure their home routers at all.

By IBRAHIM BARZAK
Associated Press Writer

AP Photo/EYAD BABA




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GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) -- Gaza's Hamas rulers on Tuesday said they have reached a long-awaited cease-fire with Israel meant to end months of Palestinian assaults on Israeli border towns and bruising Israeli retaliation.

The announcement came shortly after Egypt, which has been trying to broker the truce for months, said the cease-fire would go into effect on Thursday. Israel refused to confirm a deal, but said a "new reality" would take hold if Palestinian attacks end.

In a last-minute jolt, Israeli aircraft attacked three targets in the southern Gaza Strip. One of the airstrikes destroyed a car, killing six militants inside.

A large crowd gathered around the car's smoldering remains, and a puddle of blood was visible on the asphalt. Gaza militants then fired four mortar shells at Israel, the first of the day, the military said. No one was hurt.

Hamas officials accused Israel of trying to undermine the truce, but said they would not let the violence derail the Egyptian efforts.

"We are going to commit ourselves to the start time that Egypt is going to declare regarding the calm," said Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri. However, the group's television station said the movement would respond to "any Zionist aggression," underscoring the delicate situation.

Egypt's powerful intelligence chief, Omar Suleiman, has been meeting separately with Israeli and Hamas officials for months in hopes of brokering a truce.

Israel has been seeking a halt to rocket attacks launched from Gaza nearly every day, an end to Hamas' weapons buildup, and the release of an Israeli soldier held by Hamas for two years.

Hamas, meanwhile, wants an end to Israel's military activity in Gaza and the lifting of an Israeli blockade that has caused widespread destitution in the already impoverished coastal strip.

In Washington, the State Department declined to confirm reports of a truce, but said it was supportive of efforts to bring calm to Gaza and southern Israel while insisting that Hamas remained a terrorist organization.

"We believe that establishing calm in Gaza and elsewhere is a good thing and we're supportive of Egyptian efforts and other efforts to achieve this," deputy spokesman Tom Casey told reporters.

"But saying you have a loaded gun to my head but you are not going to fire it today is far different than taking the gun down, locking it up and saying you're not going to use it again," he said. "Even if this is in fact a true report, it hardly takes Hamas out of the terrorism business."

Even running an article through Babelfish Eng>Ger>Eng would be sufficiently obfuscating -- and quick. I think maybe I'll do that as a version 0.1.

Al Gore forms its beginning on the president election campaign 2008 to the support Barack Obama. Gore appeared with the Democratic presidential candidate Monday night at a rauen collection at Detroit' Arena s-Joe Lewis. Its speech was partial label, partial blistering attack on president Bush.

Especially if both are quoting some other source.

Am I required to pay $12.50 for this?

After all, RIAA and Sony and gang want to be able to rootkit or DOS anyone they suspect of stealing their IP. Nothing for the state to look at there!

As I understand it, there has already been an attempt to privatize water in one South American country that almost caused a revolution due to the ridiculous prices that were to be charged. Keep this up corporate America as you are killing the goose that laid the golden egg.

No. It's not "okay".

Full stop.

Good try, web design company! But you might want to pick a more human-sounding name next time, like Sue or Trogdor.

*Oh, I see the distinction. Corporations don't.

------
Gur cerprqvat fgngrzrag jnf svygrerq guebhtu zl Fnepnmzb-Oynfgre 3000 Oybt Erfcbafr Flancgvp Raunapre

I was looking for info on an AP article** about voters going online to find the full texts of speeches, and therefore circumventing the soundbite, and I found an article related to this story.

"If a student is caught lifting text from a website and claiming it as his own, that’s grounds for failure. End of story...If only such a punishment loomed in the professional world."

That's either unbelievably blatant spin, or unbelievably blatant "not doing your homework." Argh! Is TimesOnline a piece of trash, usually?

The article is claiming that AP is just trying to stop plagiarism. (Can you plagiarase if you credit the source? Isn't that different from unauthorized reproduction, which is really the issue here?)

*Which is ruder, not reading, or admitting that you haven't?

**My work has TVs with an AP crawl in the elevator lobby and occasionally a story catches my eye and I go digging.

I am going to call AP back and tell them I'm so outraged at their new policy of attempting to extort money for what should be free under fair use that I will NOT be purchasing their service, and will instead buy UPI's.

While AP is patently being stupid in the general case on this, the articles they're citing as plagiarism at the Drudge Retort probably *wouldn't* pass a teacher's no-plagiarism filter. Lots of the discussion mentions the number of words DR is quoting, but what they're not mentioning is the total number of words in the DR posts, nor the lack of indications which bits are AP quotes. One of the DR posts quotes 51 words from AP, and is 51 words long. A post I count as having 52 words quotes 49 of those from AP. There doesn't seem to be an indication that those 49 words are a quotation. Maybe I'm supposed to know that's how Drudge works? Is it plagiarism if you know how it works but I don't and I think you wrote it when you didn't?

I feel like I'm missing something. I'd say what DR is doing is pretty clearly wrong. AP is taking a pretty clearly wrong situation and using it to cut their own throat.
Summary of the alleged infringement

Gotta say, I'm disappointed. I don't like having to feel the least bit of sympathy for APs stupid position.

Despite the topic of this thread, for some reason* my brain tried to read 'TVs' as "transvestites," 'AP' as "antipersonnel weapon," and 'crawl' as a verb. Oh, and it was taking 'My work' as meaning "the opus I'm in the process of creating" rather than "the company I work for."

I snapped out of it very quickly, I'm happy to say, but the image of men in dresses, each armed with a scary-looking gunlike object, grimly crawling through an elevator lobby was vivid and bizarre.

*probably exhaustion

Wow. Vivid and bizarre are good words for it, all right. As I'm read your description, I parsed it one bit at a time, so I've got a mental image of men in dresses, each armed with a scary gunlike object, crawling through the elevator lobby a few feet from here.

Fun!

Hope you get some rest, and that it was entertaining as well as bizarre.

Xopher @128:... the image of men in dresses, each armed with a scary-looking gunlike object, grimly crawling through an elevator lobby was vivid and bizarre.

...and was going to be the climax of my NaNoWriMo novel! Pants!
(Is it too early to mention NaNoWriMo? Do I get points for being first? Thought not.)

Has AP ever actually come out with the material they claimed they were going to come out with regarding what they considered unacceptable why?

#153 Terry

Paula: No. They probably don't dare since it will be in violation of the idea of fair use (which is, as I seem to recall we went over, a set of guides, not a set of bright lines).

Lying scum
Lying scum
AP tells us lies,
Lying scum,
Lying scum
And they won't say why,
The lawsuits they use
Bloggers abuse,
Lying scum,
Lying scum,
Lying scum.

Lying scum
Lying scum
AP said they say,
Lying scum,
Lying scum
What had gone astray
But it's beens weeks,
There's been not a peep
Lying scum,
Lying scum,
Lying scum.

Lying scum
Lying scum
AP tells us lies,
Lying scum,
Lying scum
From them then don't buy,
Lies they have spread,
Their business should go dead,
Lying scum,
Lying scum,
Lying scum.

court cost for proof would be overwhelming in any matter...

That is precisely the problem, or a big part of it: AP has much deeper pockets than most of the people they'd be going to court with over this matter.

AP is suing the artist who did the Obama posters; it seems they don't actually have the copyright to the picture they are claiming he plagiarised.

I don't have the money to prove they stole something of mine that way.

How much less will I have the money when they are claiming the words aren't mine?

AP threatens to sue an AP affiliate for embedding videos from the AP's own Youtube channel

Apparently the AP exec-in-charge-of-threatening-people had no idea that AP had its own Youtube channel, let alone that they were actively trying to get more affiliates to make use of it. He then failed to at least back off the high-horse gracefully, as with an apology.