Because apparently even referencing an article violates their intellectual rights. More after the quote.

Taking a new hard line that news articles should not turn up on search engines and Web sites without permission, The Associated Press said Thursday that it would add software to each article that shows what limits apply to the rights to use it, and that notifies The A.P. about how the article is used.

Tom Curley, The A.P.’s president and chief executive, said the company’s position was that even minimal use of a news article online required a licensing agreement with the news organization that produced it. In an interview, he specifically cited references that include a headline and a link to an article, a standard practice of search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo, news aggregators and blogs.

Asked if that stance went further than The A.P. had gone before, he said, “That’s right.” The company envisions a campaign that goes far beyond The A.P., a nonprofit corporation. It wants the 1,400 American newspapers that own the company to join the effort and use its software.

“If someone can build multibillion-dollar businesses out of keywords, we can build multihundred-million businesses out of headlines, and we’re going to do that,” Mr. Curley said. The goal, he said, was not to have less use of the news articles, but to be paid for any use.

Public relations issues aside, since when do private companies get to decide what constitutes fair use? That’s defined by the law of the land — not whatever a board of directors or the management of a news service.

The law permits reviewers and critics to use sections of copyrighted work without permission. Fair use allows commentators to excerpt sections of an article to offer criticism, commentary, parody, and other reaction to said work. Simply because the Associated Press doesn’t like something doesn’t mean it’s suddenly not the law.

And does the Associated Press really want to lose all of the revenue and traffic that will result from pissing off the blogosphere? There are major blogs with more traffic and viewers than large newspapers have in this day-and-age. Does the AP really think that bloggers will begin paying exorbitant fees for the honor of using reports from the newswire? They’ll simply link to Reuters, AFP, BBC, Fox, CNN, and other global outlets that produce similar reports.

Every so often the AP launches into a crusade against the blogosphere, and every time it’s backfired spectacularly. It’s very likely that this is just the latest example.