The article also says the AP is backing down from their initial complaint, because they agree it may have been heavy-handed. Hand it to the Associated Press, folks, it's rare to see a company that large back down over anything.
It is a trivial exercise to determine if a use is protected as fair use... to someone who knows nothing about IP law except Slashdot-user slogans. To an IP lawyer, fair use is one of the most complicated things in the entire domain of IP. The public tends to miss the nuances of the real meanings of the laws, and since most of this debate is being held by the public, such ignorance is showing frequently.
"Fair Use" refers to the exclusions in copyright law that allow you to reproduce material without permission from the content owner, in fact even against their explicit wishes in certain situations. The most common is that of archival; you have the right to create back-up copies of things. (There is some debate about whether a EULA agreement on software can make you give that up, to my knowlege never resolved in court.)
I hate to be a wet blanket on the Elian/Bud mix, but the authors of that movie are not as solidly on the right side of the law as many people may think.
Scary!
The entire following opinion on the Elian/Bud mix of course assumes Fair Use even exists... but there are efforts to eliminate it. First Amendment Lawyer Takes on Movie Studios in DVD Case: "If the judge's view is correct, Benkler said, then the Digital Millennium Copyright Act 'does something no copyright law has ever done -- it extinguishes fair use,' he said." With the anti-circumvention clause, one can protect any work against any unauthorized use, fair or otherwise, simply by protecting it with something, no matter how weak, that must be circumvented. Therefore, it blocks all use.
(That's one of the reasons I'm so against web site annotation. It's just one of the ways the heat gets turned up on web sites.)
We tend to forget what is being done to us, because it happens so slowly and each step seems so small. The proverbial frog jumps right out of boiling water but will let you slowly raise the water temperature around it until it dies. We need to look around every once in a while and notice the bubbles in the water forming around us.
This may overstate the case a bit (not all cookies are privacy invasions!), but I think that it's more accurate then most would admit.
A List Apart: "The electronic privacy invasion points to the failure of site designers to provide compelling content, clear navigation, and a user experience memorable enough to entice repeat visits. Click-thru is more important than Content. We have opted to become Electronic Rapists."