Publishers Hear Digital Fingerprinting Pitch
by Karlene Lukovitz
http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.san&s=59820&Nid=30069&p=204904
WATCHING GOOGLE AND VIACOM DUKE it out in court is interesting, but in the real world, publishers and other site owners are more interested in finding a practical way to monitor who's using their content and either get some reimbursement or get it off the Web.
As the business world read about Google/YouTube filing for a dismissal of Viacom's $1 billion copyright infringement suit earlier this week, a group of publishing executives gathered at a Magazine Publishers of America "Meet the Innovators" session to hear a pitch for one potential answer.
Attributor Corp., a privately held Redwood City, CA company started by Silicon Valley executives, is testing technology that scans and captures digital "fingerprints"--or identifying characteristics--of text, images and audiovisual content and then continuously scans its index of the Web to pick up matches.
The company claims that the system can spot content reuse within just about any Web area/format, including RSS feeds, self-published sites, social networks, advertising networks, search engines and aggregators, based on a few text sentences, bits of an image, or seconds of an audio/video clip.
Attributor doesn't claim to know exactly what is and is not "fair use" under the evolving legal precedents surrounding the Digital Millennium Copyright Act; rather, the system employs a site owner's own specified criteria to generate automatic responses to identified instances of reuse, explained CEO Jim Brock, a former Yahoo copyright counsel who co-founded Attributor in 2005 with Silicon Valley entrepreneur Jim Pitkow.
Depending on the scenario (the percentage of content used, whether it's being used for commercial purposes, etc.), a content reuser might, for instance, receive a request to remove content, or a proposal to allow continuing reuse of the content in return for giving the originator a portion of advertising revenue or licensing fees. A single console provides the site owner with ongoing monitoring of each issue's status until there is some kind of resolution.
Site owners can also employ a searchable public registry that allows anyone wishing to republish content to identify the owner and seek a licensing agreement.
In short, Attributor may present a more streamlined and wide-ranging solution than existing content monitoring systems like Indigo Stream Technologies' Copyscape, which relies on Google's search engine to seek out unauthorized uses.
Attributor is now in beta with several "large, international publishers," and is taking requests to generate free trial reports for interested publishers while the development phase continues, Brock said. Between 40 and 45 million Web pages per day are being added to the system through RSS feeds and periodic content scanning/conversions, he added.
In December, the company announced that it had received $10 million in funding to date from investors including Sigma Partners, Draper Richards LP, First Round Capital, Amicus and Selby Venture Partners.
Where does Brock think digital fair use definitions are headed? "At this point, nobody can say that a certain percentage of an article equates or does not equate to fair use," he says. "It's still subjective under the law. But once we have the systems in place for transparency, we believe those standards will evolve."
Meanwhile, he says, "if from a business standpoint, it's not fair use by your standards, you can address that, negotiate, respond as you see fit." For example, if no attribution is provided, a significant portion of a given piece of content is being used, and it's being used for commercial purposes, "then you've got three indicators that might set off a 'ding, ding, ding,'" Brock notes.
Showing posts with label MPA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label MPA. Show all posts
Friday, May 04, 2007
Saturday, April 28, 2007
Blogging is Serious Media Business
Blogging is Serious Media Business
By Kristina Joukhadar
http://www.circman.com/viewmedia.asp?prmMID=3038
MPA member blogs now stand at 400. Not to be outdone, 75 percent of the nation’s largest newspapers currently blog on business related topics.
The Magazine Publishers of America has released an online listing of the approximately 400 blogs established by its publishing members. Although there are 32 publishers—among them Fortune, Forbes, Scientific American, Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, Good Housekeeping, Advertising Age and FOLIO:—who only list one blog for their magazines, many have multiple blogs.
The “winner” in terms of pure number of blogs for one “publisher” would have to be CNET Networks, with 33 individual blogs. This is a bit deceptive, though, because the blogs cover different areas of the network and are not tied to print magazines. In second place, at 17 blogs each, are Business 2.0 and Computer World. InfoWorld is next up, with 15 distinct blogs.
Perhaps some of the most unusual blogs are listed under the Glamour magazine brand. Topics like Beauty Insider, Did You Hear, and Slaves to Fashion are blogs one might expect to see—even Don’t Spotting isn’t too much of a stretch. But two of Glamour’s blogs—in particular, See Allysa Date and Life with Cancer—both written by staffers, represent an incredible extension of the brand in a very personal way.
75 Percent of Newspapers Blog
According to a study released yesterday by the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism at Arizona State University, 75 percent of the national’s largest newspapers now include business-related blogs.
Although 38 of the largest 50 papers have a blog and 24 of them have two or more, less than 10 percent of papers overall have blogs. The average number of blog postings per week is three; and the median number of reader comments to business blogs over a two-week period was nine. Half the respondents said they receive from one to five reader comments per posting; one third receive no responses at all.
"Newspapers clearly need to be experimenting with blogs as another way of reaching readers beyond the printed page," said Stephen Doig, the study’s researcher, “But it’s less clear at this point that blogs give an immediate payoff in increased readership for most news sites.”
By Kristina Joukhadar
http://www.circman.com/viewmedia.asp?prmMID=3038
MPA member blogs now stand at 400. Not to be outdone, 75 percent of the nation’s largest newspapers currently blog on business related topics.
The Magazine Publishers of America has released an online listing of the approximately 400 blogs established by its publishing members. Although there are 32 publishers—among them Fortune, Forbes, Scientific American, Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, Good Housekeeping, Advertising Age and FOLIO:—who only list one blog for their magazines, many have multiple blogs.
The “winner” in terms of pure number of blogs for one “publisher” would have to be CNET Networks, with 33 individual blogs. This is a bit deceptive, though, because the blogs cover different areas of the network and are not tied to print magazines. In second place, at 17 blogs each, are Business 2.0 and Computer World. InfoWorld is next up, with 15 distinct blogs.
Perhaps some of the most unusual blogs are listed under the Glamour magazine brand. Topics like Beauty Insider, Did You Hear, and Slaves to Fashion are blogs one might expect to see—even Don’t Spotting isn’t too much of a stretch. But two of Glamour’s blogs—in particular, See Allysa Date and Life with Cancer—both written by staffers, represent an incredible extension of the brand in a very personal way.
75 Percent of Newspapers Blog
According to a study released yesterday by the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism at Arizona State University, 75 percent of the national’s largest newspapers now include business-related blogs.
Although 38 of the largest 50 papers have a blog and 24 of them have two or more, less than 10 percent of papers overall have blogs. The average number of blog postings per week is three; and the median number of reader comments to business blogs over a two-week period was nine. Half the respondents said they receive from one to five reader comments per posting; one third receive no responses at all.
"Newspapers clearly need to be experimenting with blogs as another way of reaching readers beyond the printed page," said Stephen Doig, the study’s researcher, “But it’s less clear at this point that blogs give an immediate payoff in increased readership for most news sites.”
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