www.Wednesday: The Washington Times Copies the AP – Starts Charging Bloggers to Quote Them

I was a sent a lead today by a publishing agent to an article published by one of his clients. In the process of researching to see if I wanted to write about the article, I noticed that the Washington Times is now using a system that is very similar to the one used by the Associated Press, whereby it is charging bloggers to quote from its stories.

If you want to check it out, click on the “Click here for reprint permissions!” link at the bottom of their stories. Basically, you can use the story for a month but then it has to be taken down, or you have to pay at least $300. Bloggers usually don’t take stories down after a period of time, because we rely on links to and from those stories to help us build page rank in the search engines.

For more information on the mainstream media’s war on new media, check out the latest attempt by the Associated Press to intimidate bloggers, HERE.

What does this mean for bloggers, citizen journalists, members of the new media? It simply means that we need to do what we should have been doing all along – know our rights under the fair use laws, do our own research, link to each other, and refuse to allow anyone to monopolize the free flow of information.