How to tackle copyright infringement has recently become a hot topic in the news industry. Attributor is offering a novel solution via the Fair Syndication Consortium that aims to keep all parties happy. The Silicon Valley-based start up has developed technology capable of tracking news outlets' online content, and came together with a group of publishers to form the FSC, which plans to seek advertising revenue when their content is reused. The Editors Weblog spoke to Jim Pitkow, CEO of Attributor, about what the company can offer to newspapers in terms of increasing revenue and protecting copyrighted material.

More than 1,000 publishers have now signed up to the Fair Syndication Consortium and agreed to have their content tracked. Pitkow explained that he started to persuade some of these of the extent of the problem in January when Attributor took 250,000 articles from 25 major publishers and ran these through its system for 30 days. Attributor found that each article was reproduced fully an average of 11 times across the Internet. So the seriousness of the issue was clear, and Attributor decided that a type of ad revenue sharing scheme was the best solution.

Leave the content, take the money

Rather than ordering those who reuse content to take it down, Attributor wants "to find ways to share in that advertising revenue that's being generated." This solution stems from the idea that the larger the audience for news, the better, and as long as the original producers of the content are able to receive revenue, it is fine for their content to be reused elsewhere. Pitkow explained that Attributor had decided to "work at the currency level" in an attempt to come up with a proposition that would mean that "everybody can still profit from the syndication of this content."

So, the Fair Syndication Consortium plans to work with advertising networks like Google's Adsense, which are used by many smaller sites to place ads, to demand a cut of the revenue generated alongside reused content for those who originally produced it. If this demand is denied, then the rights holders can order their content removed.

The sites that the FSC will target are those that "are specifically geared towards repurposing other people's content and using Adsense alongside," Pitkow clarified. As well as being more profitable for publishers, the FSC also intends to make the process of responding to misappropriation of content simple and straightforward, involving dealing with advertising networks rather than having to serve lawsuits to publishers.

For the FSC to work, it is essential to seek the cooperation of ad networks. The Consortium's first agreement has been reached, with AdBrite, and Pitkow was confident that this signals significant progress. The company is looking to get other ad networks on board but even just one is a good start, Pitkow said. "If you have one network that participates, and the rest are going to be forced to remove their ads, it means that everybody who's syndicating content is going to move to the ad network that does."

There is a financial incentive for advertisers to take part, as well as the motivation to appear to do no evil, Pitkow emphasised. That is, if they do not participate, the rights holders might choose to remove the ads that such networks have placed.

Will the money be enough to make a difference?

PSFK, a trends research consultancy, believes that "the numbers don't add up:" smaller sites make such a small revenue per article that the effort would not generate much income for publishers, and larger sites have often noted how to stay on the right side of fair use law. Pitkow, however, pointed to comments made by Chris Ahearn, president of Reuters Media, who said that Attributor's work would make a significant financial contribution and could really help change the nature of content syndication. Ahearn told the New York Times that there was "tens of millions of dollars worth of inventory that is likely being created that we are not getting our fair share of."

As well as a means to protect copyright, Attributor's proposal could be seen as a way to more effectively syndicate content. Pitkow pointed out that licensing deal essentially consist of estimations of the value of advertising that could be generated from content, and that this is what Attributor does, but more accurately. Pitkow said that smaller sites that do not have a formal syndication team could use Attributor for this.

So will it work?

Pitkow explained that Attributor is now taking this content of 1,000 publishers have signed up to the Fair Syndication Consortium into its system and starting to monitor how widely it is being used. He anticipates that the revenue-sharing scheme could be fully operational this autumn.

The Associated Press is independently looking at ways to track its and its members online content to ensure that unauthorised use does not occur, using a microformat tagging system via what it is calling a news registry. It is not clear yet what the AP intends to do when it finds misappropriated content. Other solutions also exist, such as the WAN-IFRA backed ACAP, or Automated Content Access Protocol; however although this is a step forward in terms of a commitment to protect content, ACAP does not as yet seem to have a strategy on how it would actually make publishers more money.

And this is where the advantage of the Fair Syndication Consortium lies. Rather than simply trying to stop content being reused, it is accepting that this is inherent in the nature of the Internet and is looking at how to use this to publishers' advantage. It may well not be a solution that all publishers approve of as it does mean that their content might remain on websites that they do not support, but at least it could contribute to tackling one of the news industry's current key challenges: how to make more money from online news.