Have you caught the flap about the AP vs. bloggers?

So the AP, in flagrant dismissal of the "fair use" doctrine (Title 17, Section 107, U.S. Code), is declaring war on bloggers by saying that any quotation of their copy of five words or more requires licensing and payment.  They got lots of criticism from various bloggers, as you might expect.

However, as the Washington Post noted, the NYT has defended the AP's actions, and so has an outfit called the Media Bloggers Association, which purports to represent bloggers in their dispute with the AP.  The MBA has opened "negotiations" with the AP to come up with "guidelines" on how bloggers can quote from AP material. 

Why are guidelines necessary?  If you don't consider bloggers' quoting from your articles to be fair use, then sue for a copyright violation.  And, as a blogger, I'm highly dubious about someone who is supposedly negotiating on my behalf.  Who are the membership of the MBA?  Well, they're not listed on their site.  (Until today, when MBA honcho Robert Cox mentioned a few on his blog.)  And can I join?  Well, no, they themselves admit that they haven't processed any membership applications since "early 2007."

So the inimitable Teresa Nielsen Hayden of Making Light did some research into Robert Cox and the MBA, and wowee, lookee at what she found:

The Media Bloggers Association substantially consists of one lackluster blogger named Robert Cox. His weblog, Words in Edgewise, and the MBA website, are two halves of the same site. Robert Cox isn’t all that interested in blogging per se. What he’s really into is self-aggrandizement by representing himself as someone who speaks for bloggers and blogging. An embarrassing number of organizations have fallen for this.

But yeah, go read the whole thing for a truly epic takedown of a self-aggrandizing self-appointed Spokesman For The Blogsophere.