The AP has gone over the top with their scheme to bill bloggers for excerpting their news stories. Throwing the concept of "fair use" in the trash, they are trying to charge bloggers, or anyone else who quotes one of their stories on a website, $2.50 per word. Of course, that's ridiculous, and I'm sure most bloggers are going to ignore their request completely. They've even gone so far as to set up a shoppingt cart with a calculator so you can pay for your quote and be "in compliance."

Michelle Malkin has more complete coverage and a lengthy list of trackbacks, so I suggest you visit her site to learn more.

I do have a question, though. It appears that in Michelle's post, she quotes some AP stories that contain quotes from her website. That got me to thinking - under AP's scurrilous pricing plan, is Michelle Malkin expected to pay AP the per word rate when the words in the AP story she's quoting are from her own website?

I suspect they would expect payment, and that just shows how completely ludicrous this is.