Conventional media are by now used to blogs hauling in large parts of stories and using them as source material for postings. It's called the "fair use" provision, and frankly, without it all sorts of journalism big and small wouldn't be committed.
But a recent scuffle in the U.S. involving The Associated Press is an indication of some new testiness in this area. Last week The AP warned The Drudge Retort (not to be confused with The Drudge Report) that it was overstepping AP's copyright (in one case, by using 79 words) on seven of its posts.
The move sent a lot of bloggers into a new sphere of outrage and indignation, and this weekend The AP backed down (although it still wants the seven postings changed) and suggested it's going to get to work on a policy to govern the ground.
This is a significant move, in that it could start to establish boundaries upon which conventional organizations (and, they would hope, the courts) define the legal protection of their copyrighted material. In turn, that could create new guides for permissible use of content by others.
