There are only three ways this can end

"This" being the Associated Press's continued flirtations with asserting "intellectual property" rights extending far beyond past accepted and enforceable norms, in an age when such claims are undergoing a massive, technology-driven decrease in enforceability, and when the very idea of "intellectual property" is in fact being agonizingly reappraised in its entirety.

One possible outcome is that the Associated Press will bankrupt itself pursuing frivolous and malicious litigation.

The second is that the Associated Press will bankrupt itself by making itself irrelevant -- adopting policies which make it into a minor news source rather than a major one.

The third is that the principals of the Associated Press will extract crania from recta and realize that every time someone posts a "fair use length" tidbit from one of their articles, accompanied by a link to that article either at AP itself or at one of the publications that pay for AP's wire service, AP profits.

That's my take, anyway. Kevin Carson seems to agree -- see his latest column at the Center for a Stateless Society.