It's all fun and games until some online yokel takes the copy and paste function a step too far. At least that seems to be the stance of the AP, which has announced it intends to impose restrictions on how much of its articles (those darn) bloggers will be able to use, "The principal question is whether the excerpt is a substitute for the story, or some established adaptation of the story." From today's NYT:

The A.P.'s effort to impose some guidelines on the free-wheeling blogosphere, where extensive quoting and even copying of entire news articles is common, may offer a prominent definition of the important but vague doctrine of "fair use," which holds that copyright owners cannot ban others from using small bits of their works under some circumstances.

The issue came to light last week when the AP issued a "heavy handed" letter to the Drudge Retort asking that they remove seven AP items from the site. The AP "retreated" a day later but still plans on rethinking its "policies toward bloggers," meaning that at some point we may actually have to compose entire sentences on our own.