Then there’s the blogger who doesn’t buy AP material but links to it occasionally. No real harm, but no real return for AP.

There’s the sports forum where fans will post whole AP stories. The harm might be random but precedent-setting, with no return for you and no return for AP.

Then there’s the aggregator that doesn’t buy from AP but builds a business around a large collection of links, including to large quantities of AP. Even if the aggregator buys, why should anyone else buy from AP? “Do what you do best and link to the rest.”

AP tried impose its own rules on an unruly sphere, rules that were stricter than the generally accepted understanding of fair use, and had to back down. But AP runs the risk of ending up with one customer and almost no suppliers.

If an AP article on my web site gets linked, I get more visitors to my site, I make more money, I’m more inclined to do business with AP.

Google, with 2 competing ad networks of their own in adsense and soon in doubleclick, also recently inked an advertising deal with Yahoo. A recent analyst said the lion’s share of Google’s profits come from advertising revenue, and a recent survey of Time’s top 50 websites found 33 of them were using google adsense. The squeeze to drive revenue to their own service has been successful.

So a company with a monopoly share of the search market and 2 competing ad networks is dictating how consumers and content producers can sell legitimate adversiting. If the market is moving from a content economy to a link economy, government regulation in this instance is needed.