Fair Syndication Consortium meeting held, but few details emerged

The Fair Syndication Consortium, a partnership between Silicon Valley start-up Attributor and a group of publishers, held its first meeting since the project was announced on Thursday. The group aims to target online advertising networks and request a cut of the money made of ads alongside reproduced newspaper content, with Attributor acting as a middleman. Editor & Publisher associate editor Jennifer Saba asks 'now what?' and establishes what exactly the public knows about it so far. The answer, it seems, is not very much.

Attributor found that for every one visitor who reads content on the original site, five find it in full elsewhere: figures that should be enough to persuade publishers that this issue should be addressed. "We don't presume the top publishers are going to move entirely to this model," Pitkow said. "We are just here to unlock inventory for these rights holders." If ad networks do not cooperate, Pitkow said that "the copyright holders can request those ads be removed," as once a copyright owner alerts a source of illegal use, any "safe harbour" disappears.