Bloggers, DO NOT Link to AP Stories.

It has been said, cynically, that the First Amendment only exists to protect two for-profit industries: The sale of Salvation and the Sale of Information. Seems like the cynic may be right about the latter:

AP’s press release is troubling enough, but in a related New York Times interview that day with Richard Perez-Peña, AP’s Curley added this:

The company’s position was that even minimal use of a news article online required a licensing agreement with the news organization that produced it. He specifically cited references that include a headline and a link to an article, a standard practice of search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo, news aggregators, and blogs. (Emphasis mine.)

That's right - link to an AP story, the AP may come after you. So when you hear "professional" journalists waxing sanctimonious about them protecting freedom of speech and freedom of the press, remember it is, in reality, so much bullshit. They are protecting their turf. Nothing more.

So from now on I will not link to any article where I see the "AP" moniker. Which means no more RSR traffic to those online newspaper and magazine websites to read those articles - and fewer eyes to see all those banner ads those websites charge for.

I may be one website with a couple hundred readers (on a good day - ed.), but RSR ain't alone here. So how 'bout it, my fellow bloggers - an AP boycott?