Ad Revenue Sharing: The New Wave of Content Diplomacy?

April 22nd, 2010

As a new breed of journalists rise throughout the Web, the uncertainty surrounding content reuse is taking center stage within the journalism and book publishing industries.

More and more articles are being written with debates around the ramifications of reuse and the growth of free syndication. As an FSC study indicated, 75,195 Web sites reused at least one U.S. newspaper article without a license, with 112,000 near-exact unlicensed copies of articles found throughout a 30-day study.

Yet, the topic of content diplomacy looms. What steps must be taken on behalf of publishers to educate consumers about the monetized value of their re-used content?  How can we foster collaboration with syndicators for the sake of a consumer economy?  How do we all allay people’s fear that there is a movement to remove all unlicensed content from the Web?

Michiko KakutanIt’s elaborates on this topic in his article, “Texts Without Contexts,” discussing the impact of digital media for content producers:

“It’s not just a question of how these “content producers” are supposed to make a living or finance their endeavors, however, or why they ought to allow other people to pick apart their work and filch choice excerpts. Nor is it simply a question of experts and professionals being challenged by an increasingly democratized marketplace.”

Recently, Felix Cohen wrote an article in the UK-based Guardian Newspaper, highlighting his perspective about “a modern copyright system that focuses on empowering producers, not criminalizing consumers.”

However, as Felix summarizes, the legislative process is lengthy and tiresome. Rather, simplified solutions like Attributor’s content syndication model and the FSC’s Guidelines (pdf) point towards a starting point for a broader discussion of content syndication, with solutions benefiting publishers, syndicators, aggregators and consumers of content.

Felix discusses the need for a new, non-legislative copyright system that rewards creative people, creates an array of new business models and supports the modernization of syndication processes, all while emphasizing the need to empower producers rather than criminalize consumers.

We will further discuss this and related issues in additional posts to come.

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Posted in Industry News, Research | 3 Comments »

Obama lines up with copyright owners

March 18th, 2010

Last week, President Barack Obama announced his support to ‘aggressively protect‘ intellectual property. The move, a first by the current administration, is a positive sign that the severity of content reuse without a shared-monetization model is being taken seriously at a federal level.

The Fair Syndication Consortium has worked hard to collectively define a new set of rules for the Content Economy – a set of rules to bring the industry further into the realm of self-regulation and adopting respectful practices that benefit all participants. President Obama’s content-focused declaration, as part of his administration’s effort to revitalize a wounded economy, is another large step in support of the FSC’s mission to catalyze content syndication, address key issues and propose solutions that benefit publishers, syndicators, aggregators and consumers of content.

Obama addressed this issue while announcing the National Export Initiative, stating, “We’re going to aggressively protect our intellectual property…our single greatest asset is the innovation and the ingenuity and creativity of the American people…we just want to make sure that it’s licensed and that American businesses are getting paid appropriately.”

Moving forward, it is imperative to build on this momentum and collectively work towards an open and fair online content economy.

Posted in Industry News | 5 Comments »

The Next Step: Traffic Diversion and Ad Removal

March 5th, 2010

Publishers of all sizes are grappling with complex issues surrounding online content syndication. The Fair Syndication Consortium was founded to support an open and fair online content economy that compensates those who create valuable content while appropriately rewarding those who aggregate, republish and monetize it. For a thriving online content economy with quality content, it’s essential to support an infrastructure that creates value for that content.

In December of 2009, the Consortium shed a light on the massive problem of online content reuse with our research on U.S. newspaper content reuse, emphasizing the need for a new model of online content syndication. With the Fair Syndication Guidelines, we have outlined recommendations for handling unauthorized content syndication to help achieve this new model.

Attributor has started implementing the guidelines on behalf of several Consortium members, the specifics of which are well covered by Ken Doctor and Alan Mutter. This process is meant to allow the free-flow of content online, while simply removing the economic benefit for those who reuse content without appropriate permission.

This is the first time a truly new model has been proposed for online content syndication and we think the potential for all parties is great. For more details on traffic diversions and ad removals, visit the Attributor blog post.

Posted in Content Management and Syndication Guidelines | 11 Comments »

U.S. Newspaper Content Reuse Study

December 1st, 2009

Today, we released a research report showing how the articles from 157 newspapers were reused and monetized.  Our goal is that this  study and others like it will provide important data points for the industry as they evaluate U.S. Newspaper’s ability to thrive online.

Listed below are a few key findings from the research – you can download a full .pdf report of the research here.

  • During a 30-day period (October 15 – November 15, 2009), 75,195 Web sites reused at least one U.S. newspaper article without a license.
  • On these sites, 112,000 near-exact unlicensed copies of articles were found.
  • Among the top 1,000 sites reusing the most articles, blogs represent less than 10 percent of the total.
  • In addition to the 112,000 full article copies (defined as more than 80 percent of the original article and more than 125 words reused), an additional 163,173 excerpts were found (defined as less than 80 percent of original article and more than 125 words).
  • Ad networks from Google and Yahoo dominate the unlicensed monetization of U.S. newspaper content. Google represents 53 percent of the total monetization with Yahoo accounting for 19 percent.

The Fair Syndication Consortium is open to publishers of all sizes, and we invite you to join in support of publishers receiving their fair share of ad revenue wherever their content appears across the Web.

UPDATE:   These results exclude any articles found on Google News.

Posted in Research | 34 Comments »

A First Step

October 15th, 2009

After talking with all types of publishers ranging from large newswires to regional newspapers and individual bloggers, we were struck by the common ground that so many share regarding fair syndication practices.

The attached guidelines (downloadable .pdf, html)  summarize these thoughts as a starting point for a broader discussion of content syndication and also propose solutions that should benefit publishers, syndicators, aggregators, and consumers of content.

We’ve labeled the guidelines 0.9 for a reason – they are  imperfect, yet we trust that the spirit and intention behind the effort will be respected and useful to build upon by others, or as Chris Ahearn, President, Media at Thomson Reuters, implored, “Let’s stop whining and start having real conversations across party lines. ”

We hope these guidelines provide ample food for thought and help structure further debate on how best to embrace the Internet while allowing for content syndication to flourish for all.

Finally – while we spoke with scores of  folks to create these guidleines  – we would like to thank Steve Outing of steveouting.com and Zach Seward of the Nieman Journalism Lab for their review and feedback. Without such input, this document would have suffered greatly.

Posted in Content Management and Syndication Guidelines | 11 Comments »