AP's Top News Stories for August 3rd, in Four Words Or Less [Updated]

As you may have noticed, we here at BNET Media are all over the Associated Press‘ plan to charge bloggers for using more than four words in a headline that links to one of its stories. So, as I’m a poor blogger who can’t afford to be part of the AP’s “cash for links” program, I present to you today’s top headlines from the AP, in four words or less. Here we go:

1. LaHood confident Senate will

2. Judge approves monthly allowance

3. Clinton seeks info from

4. AP sources: Gitmo cases

5. Cash for Clunkers boosts

6. Official: 185 killed in

7. Turbulence slams Continental jet

8. AP analysis: Foreclosures stabilize

9. Ahmadinejad gets key endorsement

10. Urban Meyer gets raise

Great content, eh?

Jeez. I’m tempted to add in a multiple choice question after each truncated headline, so visitors could guess which one completes the headline. But I’d better not. The AP might charge me.

UPDATE: It’s been a busy day at the AP offices, I guess. Soon after I posted this I received this statement from the AP, which I think I can quote, ahem, freely:

The iCopyright [link added by BNET Media] form that enables users to license AP content online is drawing new attention this week.

It is an automated form, thus explaining how one blogger got it to charge him for the words of a former president [link added by BNET Media].

As the AP stated more than a year ago, the form is not aimed at bloggers. It is intended to make it easy for people who want to license AP content to do so.

AP partners with iCopyright to automate fulfillment of routine requests for rights to republish AP material, either from AP-hosted sites or member and customer sites carrying AP content. The licensing options vary greatly, from an array of uses – such as e-mail, print and save – through paid options up to and including large-scale corporate reprints of excerpts, full articles or photos.

ICopyright’s role is unrelated to the AP’s new content registry, announced in late July: http://www.ap.org/pages/about/pressreleases/pr_072309a.html

The AP’s relationship with iCopyright dates to April of last year: http://info.icopyright.com/news_041408_ap.asp

OK, the AP has had its say.

Here are links to previous coverage of the AP at BNET Media (if you pick up our content, I promise I won’t charge):

• Someone, Quick, Place the AP on Suicide Watch
• AP’s Biz Model is Just a Four-letter Word
• Print News Media to the Rest of Us: Somebody’s Gotta Pay