In late October, while I was on hiatus for my haunted house, the Fair Syndication Consortium unveiled a 0.9 version of its guidelines (PDF).

The Consortium (previous coverage) hopes to turn unauthorized usage into a profit center for content creators. The idea is that, by working with advertising networks, they can redirect some of the ad revenue from sites that use content without permission to the original creators. This would be done using content matching technology provided by Attributor, which is a charter member of the group.

The group has already announced an agreement to work with AdBrite and is reported to have over 1000 members, including, according to a recent article, The New York Times Company, the Washington Post Company, Hearst, Reuters, Media News Group, McClatchy and Condé Nast.

The new guidelines, which are a “beta” attempt at establishing the rules the members of the consortium would follow, is not meant to be a final set by any stretch, but to serve as more of a “conversation starter”.

So what’s in the draft guidelines? Read on to find out.

The Basics

The guidelines first define three different kinds of “value” that content reusers can add to a company from their site. The are as follow:

1. Link Value: The value added by linking to a source, including both direct traffic and SEO benefits.
2. Brand Value: The name recognition value from being mentioned as a source.
3. Monetary Value: Direct monetary benefit, including licensing or, in the case of the consortium, revenue sharing.

From there, the consortium attempts to define three different content usage scenarios to describe what is being syndicated.

1. Headline: The headline of up to 40 words is used, a good example being my 3 Count column.
2. Excerpt: Any amount of the original work that is used, but is not a “full copy”
3. Fully Copy: Cases where more than 125 words are used AND more than 80% of the original article are copied.

In cases where the reuse is welcome and the publisher is participating in the Fair Syndication Consortium’s revenue sharing model, both headlines and excerpts would be used solely to build link and brand value, through proper attribution, and “full copy” cases would be used to earn monetary value.

In cases where the reuse was not desired or the creator is not participating in revenue sharing, action would be limited to full copy cases, save a letter direct to the person doing the copying in hopes of bringing them into compliance, which is used in all cases. The action, when taken, would first consist of a takedown notice sent to the search engines and the site’s advertising network, if applicable. If that fails to bring about compliance, then a takedown notice is issued to the host. In all cases, legal action is only considered if the problem is “systematic”.

This creates a climate where only fully copy uses of ones content are pursued actively, either for monetization or removal. Other cases are used solely to build link and brand value, but even in cases where that is not applied, pursuit is never more aggressive than a letter to the person reusing the content.

The question is whether or not this is the way to go and, on that front, I have mixed feelings.

My Thoughts

I think the big ideas in the guidelines are pretty good. There is a lot of positive content reuse going on and this system does seem to try and reward/encourage it. It’s focus on attribution, both with links and names, is a solid start and I’m hopeful that newspapers and other mainstream media outlets will get behind this.

Also, I agree with the proposal of focusing all resolution efforts on full copy cases. Not only is doing otherwise impractical, both in terms of the law and available resources, but it is the right thing to do ethically. Finally, I also agree that the first method of resolution should be to contact the infringer directly, something I’ve been saying since I opened this site.

That being said, there are a few qualms and concerns I do have with the guidelines.

1. The Definition of “Full Copy”: I don’t think I’ll ever find a mathematical definition that separates excerpt from full copy that I am happy with, but this one does seem to go a bit too far. First off, almost no works under 150 words can ever be copied in full, meeting both the 80% and 125 word criteria, and having used the Attributor system for many years I know the text matching is very good, but imperfect, making even full matches hover in the high 80% range. Though I agree it should be kept high to avoid false positives, it would be nice if A) it looked at the copy as well and B) was somewhat lower.
2. The Favoring of Ad Networks and Search Engines: The system makes ad networks and search engines the front lines of copyright enforcement and I disagree with this. First, I’m uneasy about making them the policemen of the Web but ad networks, in particular, don’t have an explicit role in the DMCA. Most have takedown procedures, but as neither hosts nor information location tools, it is unclear if the safe harbor provisions even apply to them. However, even though it is supposed to be the most “gentle” way to handle such disputes, it actually can play out much worse for the person reusing the content. A traditional takedown removes a few works or temporarily closes a site, an ad network takedown can, and often does, cut off a major source of revenue.
3. Only for Individual Cases: Finally, the guidelines really don’t deal with syndication in the sense that we normally think of it. The guidelines are for cases of limited use, an occasional article for example, not for actual syndication of content. Those matters are left open to the content creator and can even result in legal action. In short, the guidelines seem to punt when it comes to recurring use of content, instead focusing on isolated incidents.

Still, I think the guidelines are overall pretty solid and they definitely achieve the goal of being a starting point for a conversation. That is something I am trying to do here and encourage others to do as well. My hope is that the 1.0 guidelines will come out with some significant changes, but much of the tone and sense of cooperation that is in the existing ones.

Bottom Line

Now it is your turn. Either leave a comment below or, better yet, send an email to guidelines at fairsyndication dot org to offer your thoughts. I’m eager to hear what you think about the guidelines and if you would be comfortable with your content being used under them.

There is no “deadline” for comments, at least none that I have found, but due to my hiatus I am behind the curve on this one so it would probably be best to send in those thoughts sooner rather than later.

Thank you very much for your input and I look forward to hearing what you have to say.

Disclosure: I have consulted for Attributor in the past and Attributor is a technology provider for my current employer, CopyByte.com

In a press release issued today by the Fair Syndication Consortium, the organization announced both that it has grown to include over 1,000 members, ranging from amateur bloggers to major news networks, and that the advertising network AdBrite has agreed “in principle” to work with the organization and its goals.

The Consortium, previously covered here, seeks to help publishers monetize their content as it is used on other sites by tracking their content and working with advertising networks to share revenues with the original authors.

Though few details about the deal are available, Iggy Fanlo, CEO at Adbrite, said that, “We see the Fair Syndication Consortium as an opportunity to increase monetization for original content while providing our publishers with an opportunity to leverage premium content on their sites.”

The Fair Syndication Consortium was founded by content tracking-service Attributor, along with a charter group of publishers including the news syndication service Reuters. However, the service has also grown on the publisher side and also includes other prominent news organizations such as The Boston Globe, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Magazine Publishers of American and even several Web-based companies such as Gawker and Politico.

What This Means

There are still a lot of difficult nuts and bolts questions about how the Consortium will work including what percentages will be paid, how will a “match” be determined (what are the criteria) and how the Consortium will handle situations where members, though they are profiting from the use of their content, still wish the work to be removed, such as with cases of plagiarism.

These are tough questions and there are no answers to them at this time as this is just an agreement in principle.

However, it is still a major hurdle that has been overcome. Though AdBrite is not the largest ad network, in fact it is listed in the small “other” slice of the Consortium’s original pie chart, it is still a large network and a respected name in the field. The fact that they have signed on will likely pave the way for others to do the same.

Many, including myself, had wondered if advertising networks would agree to participate in the Consortium but if AdBrite can start the momentum and serve as the trailblazer, then one of the largest problems the Consortium faced, at least from a non-technical point of view, has been overcome.

In short, this new agreement means that the Consortium has a much higher chance of success now than it did before. There is no doubt that this is a step forward though we’ll only know how large of a step after some time has passed.

Bottom Line

Things are definitely looking better for the Fair Syndication Consortium. Though the longer-term impact will be the real determining factor, this is an important step forward.

If you are interested in joining the Consortium, you can do so by visiting their site. Membership is open to all publishers, regardless of size, and you will likely wish to register your content with FairShare, Attributor’s free content tracking service as it will be how the Consortium will track your content when the time comes.

The hope is that more publishers, both large and small, will sign up for the Consortium and that will, in turn, help attract new advertising networks. From there, the system can begin working on the more tactical questions and start taking the system from an idea to something that is actually functioning and sharing revenue.

Disclosure: I have consulted for Attributor in the past and am a member of the Fair Syndication Consortium.

Sourced from: Jonathan Bailey

Content monitoring company Attributor, announced a new initiative yesterday, entitled the Fair Syndication Consortium, which it hopes will revolutionize the way publishers of all sizes deal with content reuse by turning copyright infringement and plagiarism into a profit center.

The consortium hopes that, by working with advertising companies, they can redirect a percentage of revenue from sites that use content without permission. This will, in theory, reduce the amount of DMCA notices filed and will content copying and redistribution rewarding for both content creators and for those performing the distribution.

However, the idea is in its very early stages and there are many questions surrounding the details of the project and how exactly it will work. But even at this early stage, Attributor and the consortium already has many in the publishing field speaking glowingly about the possibilities of what it could do.

How It Would Work

The idea behind the consortium is fairly simple. Attributor hopes to get together a large collection of publishers of all sizes and sign them up for the group. They will track the content of the members using their existing technology, which includes FairShare, focusing specifically on cases reuse is clearly more than a fair use of the work involved and is displaying advertisements.

They will then turn to the advertising distributors, such as Google Adsense, Yahoo! and Doubleclick and ask them to give a percentage of revenues from that page to the publisher that created the content. Then, the consortium will function much like ASCAP does in the music industry, collecting and distributing royalties to its members.

Though the TechCrunch article focused heavily on spam blogs, this would be targeted primarily at regular blogs that reuse content without permission, which, according to Attributor, makes up the bulk of the reuse for most publishers.

The benefit of this system is that the people who copy the content would not have to pay anything for the use, the “royalties” would be deducted straight from their advertising earnings, and publishers would have every motivation to encourage the copying and redistribution of their work. This would likely reduce the number of takedown notices filed and cut back on the need of publishers to monitor the Web for their content.

The question, however, is whether publishers, advertising networks and the customers of advertising networks will go along with it in any meaningful way. Though the announcement is important, it is clear that there is a lot of work that lies ahead for everyone involved.

Getting Involved

Publishers of all sizes who are interested in the system can currently join the Fair Syndication Consortium for free. However, since much of the groundwork is yet to be laid out no revenue is being earned. Members will be updated on happenings around the consortium, invited to join meetings and invited to comment on various proposals.

It is clear that the Fair Syndication Consortium has the potential to revolutionize the way content is used and the way it is monetized. The questions is whether it can achieve its very lofty goal.

My Thoughts

My first thought when I read about the Fair Syndication Consortium was one of skepticism. The idea of bringing together publishers to change the behavior of search and advertising companies has been done before, albeit with a different topic.

The Automated Content Access Protocol (ACAP) is an update of the robots.txt standard that would give publishers much more control over how their content appears in the search engines. However, despite a very lengthy list publishers (PDF) that have actually implemented the system, no major search engine accepts the standard, even after nearly two years of lobbying.

However, the Fair Syndication Consortium does have at least one advantage over the ACAP protocol in that no law forces Google to follow a new robots.txt standard but it could be argued that copyright law forces ad networks to remove ads from infringing sites (Note: The DMCA does not actually cover advertising providers in any way, just hosts and search engines). As such, if ad networks don’t cooperate, one could always file copyright notices to seek the removal of the ads.

Regarding the premise of the consortium, overall, I like it. I think the big idea is a solid one and, if Attributor and the publishers can overcome publisher/advertiser apathy on this topic and implement the system, it would be revolutionary.

For that reason, I joined the consortium and am interested in seeing what they achieve as well as the opportunity to participate in the dialog. That being said, I am not expecting a great deal of money from this, at least not from Plagiarism Today, as my FairShare feed shows that very few sites have the courage (or stupidity) to scrape more than just a few words from the feed.

However, there are still a lot of details for the group to iron out. Here are just some of the initial questions and hurdles that I see.

1. Exactly what percentage of content would be needed to trigger the system? (Early indications are that they will start with near 100% matches and work down.)
2. What percentage of the revenue will be shared with the original author?
3. What if a publisher decides that a site needs to be taken down?
4. How will transparency of the system be ensured?
5. How will the customers of these advertising companies tolerate this considering it will be lost revenue?
6. Will those customers have to sign a new terms of service to make it possible?
7. How do you operate this system in a way that does not accidentally encourage spam blogging or plagiarism?

These questions haven’t been answered and really can’t since the consortium is so young and so little is set in stone. However, that is exactly why publishers, large and small, should consider joining now, to help fill in the blanks.

Bottom Line

If you are a publisher, of any size, and like the general idea of what the Fair Syndication Consortium is trying to do, then I encourage you to sign up now. Even if you have concerns or issues, it is a rare chance to participate in and follow what could be one of the most important dialogs in content reuse on the Web.

It is free to join and it gives you both a front row seat to and a voice in an extremely important negotiation, there really isn’t much more to it.

Even if the consortium were to completely “fail” and never share a single penny in revenue, the conversations it will hold with publishers and advertisers have the potential to set the stage for how the issue of content reuse is addressed for years to come. It is better to be a part of that than to watch it from afar.

For publishers, including bloggers, this could be a rare opportunity to shape the future of the Web. I’m happy to be a part of it, albeit in a small way, and I certainly hope that other small to medium-sized publishers will join me, especially since there is no cost to join.

Disclosure: I have consulted for Attributor.