Tuesday, Aug. 04, 2009

New tools coming to combat content theft

By Ken Robertson, Herald Executive Editor

The Associated Press and its member partners are on the verge of making it much more difficult for content thieves to escape detection.

By November, the AP expects to launch a two-pronged attack on websites that hijack content from AP and its members without paying to use it.

First, AP will electronically “tag” all stories filed through the AP cooperative so they can be tracked. One function those tags will provide is to specify allowed uses of the content.

Second, the AP’s text stories will be bundled into a “wrapper” that contains a beacon that will notify AP whenever its content is accessed and notify AP whether the websites using the content hold licensing rights for the content.

By some time in 2010, AP plans to make the service available to its member newspapers. That may add some teeth to newspapers’ complaints about radio and television websites that steal content from newspapers and their websites.

So what does it all mean? AP and its member newspapers hope it will have two effects — that content thieves will get caught, and that rather than run the risk of losing an expensive lawsuit the thieves will reform and become paying members of the AP.

The jury’s bound to be out on that for a while, so newspapers are looking at other enforcement (and revenue-producing) avenues as well. An outfit called Attributor is preparing with a group of the nation’s largest newspapers to test what it calls its “Fair Share Consortium” concept.

In the test, Attributor’s tracking technology would detect illegal use of the participating newspapers’ content over a 30-day period. At the test’s end, the plan is for Attributor to reach a contract with the newspapers under which participating online advertising networks would pay a share of their revenues to the papers.

The problem so far is that the two major U.S. online ad networks, Google and Yahoo, are not members of the program.

Still, the stakes of not playing in this are high for both sides. Content-providing newspapers need more dollars to keep their news-gathering alive. And ad networks like Google and Yahoo have an insatiable appetite for news content to keep their sites thriving as places to look for news and information.

Consequently, there’s leverage on both sides to broker a deal. If it happens, it may bring more cash to newspapers and their website operations. And help extend the franchise that Google and Yahoo are working to build.

As the late Glenn C. Lee, the former longtime Herald publisher used to say, “Time will tell.”

w Ken Robertson: 582-1520; krobertson@tricityherald.com

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