Honestly, I just don’t know what to say about the Associated Press and its lawyers, these days:

The Associated Press — which thinks you owe it a license fee if you quote more than four words from one of its articles — doesn’t even care if the words actually came from its article. They’ll charge you anyway, even if you’re quoting from the public domain.

I picked a random AP article and went to their “reuse options” site. Then, when they asked what I wanted to quote, I punched in Thomas Jefferson’s famous argument against copyright. Their license fee: $12 for an educational 26-word quote. FROM THE PUBLIC FREAKING DOMAIN, and obviously, obviously not from the AP article. But the AP is too busy trying to squeeze the last few cents out of a dying business model to care about little things like free speech or the law.