Cry of the Dinosaur

The Associated Press has been throwing its weight around online, going after bloggers who quote (or whose commenters quote) short excerpts between 39 and 79 words from AP stories. The New York Times has the background.

This is nonsense. And the AP seems to be surprised at the angry response from the blogosphere.

Now, Michael Arrington of the influential TechCrunch site is doing some pushing back:

So here’s our new policy on A.P. stories: they don’t exist. We don’t see them, we don’t quote them, we don’t link to them. They’re banned until they abandon this new strategy, and I encourage others to do the same until they back down from these ridiculous attempts to stop the spread of information around the Internet.

Some observers compare the AP's attitude - like those of the music and movie industries - to dinosaurs. That's appropriate. The dinosaurs were big, and very powerful, and found it easy to crush smaller opponents.

They're also extinct.

Hat tip: Instapundit