The Associated Press cracked down Friday on an obscure blog, titled the Drudge Retort (evidently a leftwing parody of Matt Drudge), having invented its own draconian version of a Fair Use Policy, amounting essentially to no use. AP ordered Drudge Retort to remove seven items which quoted between 39 and 79 words of AP articles.

(Note: the last paragraph’s two sentences fall well within the range of quotation AP proposed to forbid, amounting to 55 words.)

Faced with mounting criticism, and a proposed boycott, AP behaved in a self-contradictory fashion, announcing that it was “re-thinkng” its policy and would suspend its attacks on blogs, but AP also said it would not withdraw its demand to the Drudge Retort to remove the seven postings, and suggested short summaries of AP stories be used instead of actual quotations.

New York Times 6/16

Newshoggers‘ Boycott emblem:

Michael Arrington (Tech Crunch)’s Boycott Emblem:

Tech Crunch announced:

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.