Media Bloggers Association? Who The Heck Are You?

There seems to be some brouhaha going on over in the blogosphere, America to be precise, about quoting articles from the Associated Press. You need to pay to quote their content from the fifth word onwards. Which is pretty ridiculous if you ask me.

I haven’t been keeping up withthe entire discussion going on but just looking at how a “Media Bloggers Association” just sprang up out of the blue, to represent you and me {as bloggers} to the AP, makes me worried about it.

Pretty soon, I’m going to have a bill of rights on what I cannot or cannot say? What’s next? I can’t blog about something without providing a direct quote and having a license to actually blog about it? This could go as far as circumventing the opinion of bloggers in general, since you will probably have to buy a license to do so in the near future.

Some guy called Robert Cox, never heard of him till 5 mins ago, is apparently the president of this organization. Whatever.

Michael Arrington says that AP “doesn’t get to make its own rules about how its content is used, if those rules are stricter than the law allows.” which I totally agree with. Read this post for some back story.

Now, I’m an international blogger and I will say this - Robert Cox and AP, I don’t know how you assume that I should follow your guidelines, which I plainly will NOT, from here on I will not quote or even READ an article that has been written by any AP writer. I also certainly don’t want some organization, especially in the U.S.A, to represent me as a blogger.

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