[Journalists] Publishers See a Way to Track Their Content Across the Net

[Everett Gavel]

I wonder if this will ever work its way down to the
sharing of complete articles via e-mail, as I'm doing
here.  I don't believe we're 'supposed' to share
complete articles.  I do try to give links back to the
site, though, whenever possible.

Enjoy,
Everett
www.everettgavel.com


Publishers See a Way to Track Their Content Across the
Net
www.nytimes.com/2007/11/05/business/media/05paper.html?
_r=1&oref=slogin

By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA
November 5, 2007

Copyrighted work like a news article or a picture can
hop between Web sites as easily as a cut-and-paste
command. But more than ever, as that material finds new
audiences, the original sources might not get the
direct financial benefit - in fact, they might have
little idea where their work has spread.

A young company called Attributor says it has an
answer, and a number of big publishers of copyrighted
material say Attributor just might be right.

The company has developed software that identifies an
electronic "fingerprint" for a particular piece of
material - an article, a picture, a video. Then it
hunts down any place across the Web where a significant
chunk of that work has been copied, with or without
permission.

When the use is unauthorized, Attributor's software can
automatically send a message to the site's operators,
demanding a link back to the original publisher's site,
a share of revenue from any ads on the page, or a halt
to the copying.

The Associated Press and Reuters, each of which
publishes thousands of pieces of material each day, are
among the company's clients, and a number of large
magazines and newspapers have been in talks with
Attributor. Executives at both wire services said they
were still adapting the software to their needs and
deciding how to respond to its findings, but they do
not doubt it will have some long-term value.

"For the first time, we now have a consistent way of
getting this data and knowing what actually happens to
our product, rather just ad hoc reports," said
Srinandan R. Kasi, vice president and general counsel
for The Associated Press, which has used the software
for several months.

For newspapers and magazines, financial survival
increasingly means raising traffic on their Web sites
and revenue from online ads. Executives of some major
publishers, who asked for anonymity because they were
not authorized to discuss their talks with Attributor,
said they were somewhat optimistic that such software
can help.

"There are probably thousands of examples every year
where our stuff gets copied without authorization," a
newspaper company executive said. "The ad revenue they
get from it might not be much, but if each of those
just gives a link back to our original, that could be a
significant amount of traffic."

Attributor, based in the San Francisco area, was
founded last year by Jim Brock and Jim Pitkow, veteran
executives of technology companies. Mr. Brock, the
chief executive officer, was a senior vice president at
Yahoo. Mr. Pitkow, the chief technology officer, has a
doctorate in computer science and has headed other
technology companies.

The problem can be seen in the enormous attention given
to a series of articles on Dick Cheney published in The
Washington Post last June. One passage in the first
article drew particular attention, revealing details
like the unofficial stamp used by Mr. Cheney to label
documents as secret, and the man-size safe he used to
keep office papers.

But a lot of the people who read that passage had no
easy way of knowing that it came from The Post, or of
finding its source. A recent Google search found more
than 80 blogs and political Web sites that lifted a few
hundred words of the article or more, verbatim or
nearly so.

Some attributed the material to The Post, but offered
no link to the original article; others offered a link,
but made no mention of The Post, and some had neither.
And about half of those pages had ads on them.

The appeal for wire services is different. The
Associated Press and Reuters said searching for use
without permission may lead to potential sales. "What
you find is that the user can become a licensee," said
Mr. Kasi.

Reuters began using Attributor last month, and Chris
Ahearn, president of Reuters Media, said that first he
wants to learn how his company's thousands of customers
are using the vast stream of information it sends their
way.

But finding unauthorized use "clearly is a big
opportunity for us," Mr. Ahearn said, both to drive
traffic to the Reuters site and to turn cheaters into
customers. He added, "Our attitude is there are enough
lawyers in the world, so why don't we turn this over to
our sales people?"