"The fair use doctrine protects transformative uses of content, such as indexing to make it easier to find," says Alexander Macgillivray, Google's associate general counsel for products and intellectual property.

All Considered

Placement in a Google search is beneficial to any content provider, of course, and judging by Google's response, that may not be the AP's target. The issue, then, likely comes down to the smaller aggregation and blog sites that use some form of the AP's content. While the AP itself has , my hope is that it won't repeat the ridiculous tactics we saw in . Trying to shut down all quoting and linking is silly and goes against the group's own best interests.

If, however, the AP is looking to prevent sites from fully copying and republishing its material without permission, then it actually has a valid point. It's amazing to see how many Web sites take the liberty of lifting entire pages (or massive chunks) of content and republishing them on their own servers without thinking twice. Referencing, quoting, and commenting on a news story while linking to the original source is an important part of the online information culture. Outright stealing the content, however, is not. The AP may very well be on another foolhardy mission -- but it may also just be taking an understandable step to protect the value of its product, whatever that might be.

Until the company reveals the details of its latest dance, I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. If it becomes clear its intent is to tread down another witless warpath, it'll be another story altogether. At that point, the cries of "clueless" and "obsolete" will be far more warranted, and I'll be right at the front lines throwing out the fighting words with everyone else.