Firestorm: AP Wants $2.50 a Word for 'Web Use Excerpts'

(photoshopped by Michelle Malkin commenter Ugly American)

Tim Conneally at Beta News reported this yesterday:

The AP's disharmony with bloggers may have only just begun, as the alternative it's now offering to being served with takedown notices involves paying an up-front sum for excerpting online articles -- as few as five words.

The pricing scale for excerpting AP content begins at $12.50 for 5-25 words and goes as high as $100 for 251 words and up. Nonprofit organizations and educational institutions enjoy a discounted rate.

The "Excerpt for Web Use" pricing formula is here.

Reaction throughout the blogosphere has been furious. Among the points being made:

• AllahPundit at Hot Air points out that AP acts as if it has "an exemption from the same federal fair use statute every other content provider in America is governed by" (earlier text here misinterpreted Allah's sarcastic tone).
• LA blogger Patterico caught AP excerpting more from one of his blog posts (without payment) than AP would seem to be willing to allow bloggers to excerpt from them.
• Michelle Malkin uses the AP formula to calculate that the wire service owes her over $132,000.

Memeorandum is monitoring the ongoing reaction.

A related post is at BizzyBlog.com.