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.

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.