Associated Press tries to kill fair use -- UPDATED

According to fair-use principles, it's appropriate to use small quotations from copyrighted works for the purposes of commentary, satire, and so on. But now:

Last week, The A.P. took an unusually strict position against quotation of its work, sending a letter to the Drudge Retort asking it to remove seven items that contained quotations from A.P. articles ranging from 39 to 79 words.

On Saturday, The A.P. retreated. Jim Kennedy, vice president and strategy director of The A.P., said in an interview that the news organization had decided that its letter to the Drudge Retort was “heavy-handed” and that The A.P. was going to rethink its policies toward bloggers.

Nonetheless, they haven't actually changed their position, and although they admit the letter might have been "heavy-handed," their position is still against such quoting. They claim to be developing a "new policy" regarding such quotes, unilaterally changing the definition of fair use.

Many blogs extensively consist of small quotes, essentially teasers, from other sources, along with a link for those who are interested in reading more, just like the one above. In general, these links provide publicity for the original source, and it's kind of hard to understand why the AP would object to that.

Note that the blog involved, the Drudge Retort, is different from the better-known Drudge Report operated by muckraker Matt Drudge. The Drudge Retort is in the business of offering counterpoint to Drudge Report items.

UPDATE: More details here.