OK, I just found more stuff about AP that is mind-boggling.

I found this at  Bigsole Blogspot. It seems now that AP doesn't even want their own affiliates to embed their YouTube news videos, and sent out a cease and desist to a country music radio station here in Tennessee - WTNQ-FM who was posting their content on a website.
The man you see in this video is Christian Grantham a Nashville television producer. His own post about this topic is HERE. 

You cannot make this stuff up. Forget for a moment that WTNQ is itself an A.P. affiliate and that the A.P. shouldn’t be harassing its own members. Apparently, nobody told the A.P. executive that the august news organization even has a YouTube channel which the A.P. itself controls, and that someone at the A.P. decided that it is probably a good idea to turn on the video embedding function on so that its videos can spread virally across the Web, along with the ads in the videos.

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In a crackdown on Web piracy, the AP board of directors said they were launching a "newspaper industry initiative to protect news content from misappropriation online."

"We can no longer stand by and watch others walk off with our work under misguided legal theories," AP chairman Dean Singleton said.

The AP statement said the news agency would work with Internet portals and other partners who legally license content "and would pursue legal and legislative actions against those who don't."

AP president Tom Curley said the news agency will develop "a rights management and tracking system" for text content and "new search pages that point users to the latest and most authoritative sources of breaking news."

The AP did not mention any particular websites in its copyright initiative but many US newspapers have openly criticised aggregators such as Google News, which links to their content without sharing advertising revenue.

It's not hard to see why AP is concerned now. According to its annual report (PDF), the combination of subscriber attrition and the lower fees they've had to adopt to keep that dwindling, cash-strapped client base on board "will result in a revenue decline not seen by the company since the Great Depression."

The Internet compounds the problem. The RIAA and MPAA can at least try—however ineffectively—to use copyright law to stanch unauthorized copying of their works. But what AP is selling isn't really the scintillating prose of its writers: it's fast access to the facts of breaking news. Now, though, a writer for any one of a million websites can read an AP story on the site of a subscribing news organization, write up their own paraphrase of the story, and have it posted—and drawing eyeballs from AP subscribers—within an hour of the original's going live.

I've been out of things with a bad cold this holiday weekend, so I missed alot of news! So I'm putting all the news I could find into this one post 

This is long so all of it is under the cut.
 

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"He is much prettier and can be much more charming. And he can do that thing of being sultry and sexy. Rob can just sort of stand there and look at something and start to smoulder. And I just can't do that. I'm a natural fidget."
~ Dan Radcliffe, on the difference between himself and "Twilight" star Robert Pattinson, quoted Here

"I haven't read the last (Harry Potter) book, because I stopped reading the books when I started to feel upset that some of my favorite scenes weren't in the movies," he says with a chuckle. "I decided I'd read the last few books when the films are finished, so I wouldn't be badgering (producer) David (Heyman) by email all day going, 'Why isn't this bit in there with Lucius?' "
~Jason Isaacs, who plays Lucius Malfoy, quoted Here

"It's good that Disney is separating itself from 'Narnia.' ....It just wasn't a good fit. What, are they going to re-enact the Passion of the Lion in a Disney theme park? 'Stab the lion right on Main Street!' Especially since Narnia is so overtly Christian, whereas Disney is more secular."
~ Brandon Gray, founder of Box Office Mojo, quoted Here talking about the fact that Fox Studios has "rescued" the Narnia franchise from Disney, who had decided to stop making movies based on those books

"It's a great day for Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who is continuing on that media tour he's doing. Yesterday, he was on 'The View,' the 'Today' show, and 'Good Morning America.' Today, his hair was on 'Animal Planet' and 'Unsolved Mysteries.'"
~ Craig Ferguson, quoted Here

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"As an exciting year of unpredictable change begins, we, too, have our work cut out for us. And we’re all in this together. . . Kind of like Alaska’s Musk… Musk ox. You know how they all… they circle up, when they’re challenged. When their young are challenged. When they’re challenged, their future. They circle up, and that’s what we gotta do."
~ Alaska Governor Sarah Palin comparing the citizens of her state to a herd of Musk Oxen on the tundra, in her 2009 State of the State Address, video found on The Political Carnival Blog

“It’s unfortunate for Vice President Cheney to have had this accident....There will be those who don’t like him, who will be writing tomorrow that he had a Dr. Strangelove appearance as he appeared today in his wheelchair. It’s not something he’ll be happy about.”
~ NBC’s Tom Brokaw during live coverage, January 20, quoted Here

"The new season of 'Lost' kicked off tonight. If you haven't seen it, 'Lost' is about a group of desperate people out of touch with the world. It's based on the true story of the Republican Party."
~ Craig Ferguson, quoted in Political Humor

"I won."
~ Obama speaking to Republican Congressional Leaders on Friday, Jan. 23, 2009

"I disagree fervently with the people on our side of the aisle who have caved and who say, 'Well, I hope he succeeds. We've got to give him a chance.' Why? . . . I hope he fails." (interruption) "What are you laughing at? See, here's the point. Everybody thinks it's outrageous to say. Look, even my staff, 'Oh, you can't do that.' Why not? Why is it any different, what's new, what is unfair about my saying I hope liberalism fails? Liberalism is our problem. Liberalism is what's gotten us dangerously close to the precipice here."
~ Rush Limbaugh on his Radio Show,

“You can’t just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done."
~ Obama, again speaking to Republican Congressional Leaders on Friday, Jan. 23, 2009

“He’s managed to anger, in one fell swoop, the Kennedys, the Cuomos and the Clintons,” the consultant said, arguing that Ms. Kennedy’s family would be furious at the governor over the leaks against her, Mr. Cuomo at being passed over for the job, and Mrs. Clinton at the governor’s willingness to consider Ms. Kennedy in the first place after she endorsed Barack Obama in the presidential race last year.
“That’s a pretty good trifecta,” the consultant added.
~ Consultant quoted in The New York Times, speaking about New York Governor, David Paterson, who spent weeks making up his mind about who to nominate to replace Hillary Clinton in the Senate; he first seemed to choose Caroline Kennedy, then suddenly gave the seat to conservative Democrat, Christine Gillibrand

"I thought about Mandela, Dr. King and Gandhi and tried to put some perspective to all this and that is what I am doing now. . . . I could bring in 15 angels and 20 saints led by Mother Theresa to testify and it wouldn't matter."
~ Governor Blagojevich of Illinois, in an interview taped for Monday's The Today Show on NBC, while facing Impeachment on Monday for trying to sell Obama's Senate seat 

Now, I like old movies and I like old cowboy movies, and I want to explain how these rules work in a more understandable way. There was an old saying in the Old West. There was a cowboy who was charged with stealing a horse in town. And some of the other cowboys, especially the guy whose horse was stolen, were very unhappy with that guy. And one of the cowboys said, "Let's hang him." Then the other cowboys said, "Hold on. Before we hang him, let's first give him a fair trial. Then we'll hang him." Under these rules, I'm not even getting a fair trial. They're just hanging me. And when they hang me under these rules, that prevent due process, they're hanging the 12 million people of Illinois who twice have elected a governor.
. . . he was on the ranch with six other cowboys herding cattle and roping steers, and then he expects that when his day comes to go to court he can bring those six cowboys to say it wasn't him because he wasn't in town, he was on the ranch herding cattle -- even if he could bring those cowboys in to say that, under these rules, under 8B, it wouldn't matter. The complaint that charged him with stealing the horse would convict him because you can't challenge it and you can't have a chance to be able to contest it. Again, not fair; in fact, worse: trampling on constitutional rights.
~ Blagojevich in a Friday Press Conference using a confusing metaphor for his predicament

This is a dumb process. Senate vacancies ought to be filled by elections. The way I read the 17th amendment to the Constitution, and I do read it, I think that's the way it's supposed to be Constitutionally as well, but only nine states do it that way. The rest let the Governors give out these jobs like they're Queens picking the Knights of the Round Table, or something!
We are Americans! . . . Let Governor Blagojevich and all his cowboys be the poster children for taking this amount of power out of one person's hands. The Senate should not be this embarrassing.
~ Rachel Maddow on MSNBC after listening to Governor Blagojevich's extended cowboy metaphor, but also referring to the New York Paterson-Kennedy fiasco

( Videos of the Madness Under the Cut )

( Read the Quotes Here . . .  )

I had to start a new post because things are heating up.

In a new twist, TechCrunch blogger Michael Arrington, who banned AP (Associated Press) stories from his blog due to the latest madness (see extensive coverage on my previous entry), has now decided to call in his own attorneys because the AP has quoted his blog without paying him a dime.  He has sent a takedown order to the AP based on the Digital Millenium Copyright Act.

Fair Use Smackdown! 

Techcrunch: The AP Has Violated My Copyright and I Demand Justice

Also today, the AP promised to meet with an unknown and rather shady group called the "Media Bloggers Association" to form new guidelines, and yet not one story has leaked from the media about it. 

UPDATE: According to a blogger on The Washington Post, AP has issued a statement that this matter is now closed!  You can read it at the link because I don't dare copy their sacred words: 

AP Says Drudge Retort Excerpt Matter Closed ~ No Official Policy Announced

Rogers Cadenhead: Writes About His Meeting with the AP Attorneys  ~ 
The Stanford Fair Use Project offtered to help him.

“The principal question is whether the excerpt is a substitute for the story, or some established adaptation of the story,” said Timothy Wu, a professor at the Columbia Law School. Mr. Wu said that the case is not clear-cut, but he believes that The A.P. is likely to lose a court case to assert a claim on that issue.

“It’s hard to see how the Drudge Retort ‘first few lines’ is a substitute for the story,” Mr. Wu said.

“We are not trying to sue bloggers,” Mr. Kennedy said. “That would be the rough equivalent of suing grandma and the kids for stealing music. That is not what we are trying to do.”

( Here Are Lots of Links (Yes Links) to Bloggers Sounding Off )