Copyright verification and non-repudiation service Safe Creative announced a new partnership with content tracking company Attributor to offer content tracking for text works registered with the service.

The new feature, which is free to all users of Safe Creative, feeds text works registered through the service through Attributor’s FairShare service and reports back on any matches that FairShare finds. Safe Creative Users can then create an Incidence for the case and begin working on enforcement.

Currently, the service is limited to two matches per work, which may not be adequate for many users, but the service is in beta and that amount could very easily change at any time and Safe Creative is hoping to show more.

How it Works

If you’re a Safe Creative user (and have submitted text works to the service) you can easily activate and use the service by clicking on the “My Account” link and then visiting “Work Tracking” subtab.

From there, simply tick the box that says “Track the publication of your text works in the Internet.”

Safe Creative warns that it may take several days for results to appear, likely due to the rush of new works to track. However, they provided a screenshot of the page with some sample cases filled in.

To access this report or manage incidents, simply visit the “Work Tracking” sub-tab under “My Account” at any time.

The system will work with all text works uploaded into Safe Creative, including those submitted via RSS.

Some Thoughts

The idea of combining copyright verification and enforcement into one service is a natural one. Copyright holders want and need a one-stop place to protect, track and enforce their works and this brings Safe Creative one step closer to making that happen.

However, this feature is really more based on future promise than what it is actually worth right now. Since any content creator can sign up FairShare free and get many more results per day, there really isn’t much to gain from using the Service through Safe Creative, other than possibly the incident tracking system which, sadly, I can’t offer any commentary on right now.

That being said, the idea is very much there and this is something I’ve sought for some time. I hope that the execution of it improves, making it more useful.

If you are a copyright holder who sees relatively little infringement and primarily works in text, you should definitely take a look at this system as it can be a convenient way to give both proof of authorship and enforce your rights. If you think you might need more than a few results per work, you’re probably better off just signing up for a FairShare account now, even if you have to build a custom RSS feed.

That being said, this will still be a service to watch.

Bottom Line

Safe Creative had it right when it called this partnership a “step further to become a central place on which creators and rights holders can rely to gather as much information about their works as possible.” That is exactly what it is, a step.

The beta version isn’t terribly compelling but this is intended to be more of a proof of concept and that is what it does.

Hopefully this usefulness of this feature will grow and realize its potential. Until then though, most bloggers will be better served just using FairShare as is but it is easy to see a future where that is not the case.

Disclosure: I have done paid consulting for both Attributor and Safe Creative competitor Myows.

Yesterday, I talked about the 5-year anniversary of Plagiarism Today and what it has meant for me and the site. It’s been a great 5 years to say the least, but it has also been an interesting five years for content creators.

When I walked into Plagiarism Today, I was inspired to do so by the spate of human plagiarists, people taking my work and claiming it to be their own (despite a license to freely use it with attribution). That is why this site is named Plagiarism Today and not Copyright or Content Theft Today. However, a lot has changed over those five years and the site has had to adapt and change to those movements.

So, with that in mind, here are the five biggest changes for webmasters and bloggers that I have observed over the past five years and what they mean for those who are interested in tracking and protecting their work on the Web.

5. Growing Awareness of the Issue

When I started Plagiarism Today, I had an uphill battle convincing people that plagiarism online was a serious problem. In fact, my first mention on This Week in Tech was a fairly negative one as the hosts didn’t see the plagiarism issue I did.

Things have changed though and, perhaps the greatest sign is that I am now a recurring guest on This Week in Law, which is on the TWiT network, including most recently on Episode 63.

Clearly, people are more aware of the issues of content theft and plagiarism on the Web and that has made my job, as well as the job of webmasters, much easier.

4. Hosts Less Cooperative

One discouraging trend I have noticed is that hosts are becoming more and more hostile to dealing with copyright matters. This isn’t universally true, most hosts that were great still are and some have improved, such as Google Blogger, but most paid hosts in particular have been aggressive at trying to avoid compliance.

This isn’t an issue I’ve faced much personally, likely due to my site being well-known in these circles, but I’ve been getting increasing reports of hosts being aggressive in trying to not comply with notices. In one recent case, even accepting a counter-notice before the takedown notice was filed, in violation of the protocol.

I’ll have more on this problem in the future.

3. Social Networking Boon

In 2006 Facebook had a mere 8 million unique visitors and had just opened for public use. In 2009, Facebook has an estimated 200 million unique visitors log in every single day.

This has had a huge impact not just on how people use the Internet, but where they post works and the types of copyright infringement that are more common. Where, five years ago, forums and free blogging sites were the most common sources of human plagiarism, today it’s Facebook and other social networking sites.

This is an example of a shift in the broader Web having a dramatic impact on the way content is used (and misused).

2. Rise (and Fall) of Scraping

Much of the initial interest in Plagiarism Today was not generated by human plagiarists but by automated spammers who were scraping RSS feeds, sending people to this site to find ways to stop them.

When I started PT, full RSS scraping was fairly rare, though I did mention it first within a few months of starting the site, but it became extremely common between 2006-2008. However, the method fell out of favor with many spammers since then, in part due to improved duplicate content filters and also in part due to copyright complaints from bloggers.

Though there are still plenty of RSS scrapers out there, other types of spam blogging are increasing in popularity, including scraping search engine results, truncated feed scraping and content generation. In short, full-feed RSS scraping, though common, is losing some favor and the newer methods skirt most copyright issues.

However, from what I am seeing, human plagiarism is on the rise again, meaning that there is still plenty of work for me to do.

1. Improved Technology/Tools

In 2005, the best tool for tracking your content was Google Alerts and Copyscape was still fairly new. So much has changed in 5 years that it is difficult to put it into words.

For one, we have great new tools for tracking blog content, including free services such as FairShare, Copyscape alternatives such as Plagium and even free tools for tracking images, such as Tineye. This doesn’t count the spate of more traditional plagiarism checkers, the licensing applications and non-repudation tools that register and datestamp copyrighted works.

The tools available today put what was available in 2005 to shame and gives me a great deal of trouble trying to stay on top of all the changes. If you’re a creator of content and eager to track your work, now is a great time to be active on the Web and it seems poised only get better.

Bottom Line

The past five years have been a period of rapid change for webmasters in this area and the next five will be the same. However, I am curious about what you think will happen over the next few years in this area.

Please leave your comments below or drop me a line to send me your thoughts.

If you are launching a new site, especially a new blog, there are several things that you can do to make sure that your copyright is as protected as possible.

Simply put, when you are starting from scratch, you have a rare opportunity to get things right from the start and many of the best tools to protect your work function at their best when you use them from day one.

So, if you’re preparing to launch a new site, whether it is a static one or a blog, here are the steps you need to take today to protect your work or, if you’re not interested in enforcement, track it and encourage its sharing.

1. Register with the U.S.Copyright Office

Registration with the U.S. Copyright Office is both slow and expensive. It’s also hopelessly out of date with the current Web and can take some nine months get your certificate.

Still, the fact remains that, if you want execute your full rights in the U.S., you need that registration. You need it both to file suit in a Federal Court and you need to have either registered before the infringement or within three months of publication to be able to collect statutory damages.

If you think you might ever want to sue for copyright infringement, you will want to register your work promptly. It’s a pain and it costs $35 but it can be invaluable down the road.

Likewise, as you add content to your site, you will likely want to re-register every 3 months to ensure that the registration is up to date and all content is protected.

2. Register with FairShare or Use Google Alerts

If you have a site where most of the content will be in an RSS feed, set up an account with FairShare so it can begin tracking the content in your feed from the first post. The service is free and only requires you to subscribe to the provided RSS feed where it will list where matches of your work were discovered along with some basic information.

If your content is largely static, you can use Google Alerts. I’ve covered Google Alerts before, but basically you just find good, unique phrases within your content and have Google search for those phrases and email you with any results it finds.

3. Set up an RSS Footer

If your site will put a large part of its content into an RSS feed, add a footer to the feed. You can use a simple WordPress plugin to do that if you’re a self-hosted WordPress user or, Blogger users can simply use the option in their admin panel.

Ideally, it should include a copyright statement, a link back to your site and, possibly, a digital fingerprint to make the tracking of your content even easier.

Since RSS scraping is one of the biggest problems content creators face, this can make sure that such use is at least attributed and trackable, even if it won’t put a stop to it.

4. Set up Your Site’s Footer

Though you don’t technically need to include any copyright information for your work to be protected, it is a very good idea to do so as many have the misconception that, if it is not marked, it is free to use.

Make sure your footer includes all the basic copyright information including the year, which you can configure to update automatically, the copyright symbol, your name and the license information for the work (All Rights Reserved, Creative Commons, etc.)

5. Add Contact Information for Permissions

Finally, as you’re setting up how people will contact you, make sure to have a means for people to contact you to ask permission to use your work.

This is a good idea even if you use some form of blanket licensing, such as Creative Commons, as people will still contact you about these issues. This happens both because they don’t understand or see the license and because they want to use the work in a way that goes beyond it.

If you offer a clear path to contact you about these issues, even if it is just through your regular contact page, you’ll find people to be much more likely to ask permission than they would otherwise.

Bottom Line

When starting a new site, whether your first or your hundredth, it is a chance to get things right and avoid mistakes that you made with the other efforts. Copyright is no different in that regard.

If you value your content, its worth taking some time before launching to make some adjustments and make sure that your work is protected. Doing so will not only help you enforce your copyright, but also track where it appears on the Web, legitimately and unlawfully, letting you better understand your audience and reach.

So take the opportunity and spend a few minutes making sure your work is adequately protected.

If you’re a blogger (or any other kind of Webmaster) your content is being copied, it is virtually a guarantee. Whether you are big or small, users and commentators, along with spammers and scrapers, are using your work. Some of this use is likely legitimate, even desired, but some of it also likely goes beyond what’s allowed and into copyright infringement.

Still, not everyone has an interest in enforcing their copyright. Whether they don’t feel passionately about the issue or don’t see it as worthwhile, they feel that the (limited) time spent dealing with plagiarists and other infringers isn’t well spent.

But no matter how you feel about copyright enforcement, you still have a strong interest in both tracking and understanding how your content is used and also heading off unwanted uses of your work.

So taking a few minutes to think about your content and how you can protect/track it makes sense as it might reduce the amount of misuse you see, without you doing anything to stop infringements, and let you find readers you didn’t know you had.

1. Add/Update a Copyright Notice in Your Footer

If you don’t have a copyright notice on your blog, you need to add one and make sure it is up to date. Though you don’t need a notice to have your work be copyright-protected, many people don’t understand that and will think all work without the © symbol is free for the taking.

There’s a very simple trick for WordPress users to make sure that the date is automatically updated, making it the last time you ever have to change your copyright notice.

2. License Your Content

Next, explain the terms under which others can use your content. Are you reserving all rights? Say so clearly and post a notice indicating as such (All Rights Reserved). This can be a part of your above copyright notice.

If you want to allow certain uses of your work, add a Creative Commons or other appropriate license. Do not try to create your own license.

Expressing the terms of use clearly is important as it prevents misunderstandings but it should not be the sole focus of your site. Make it clear for anyone who is looking for the information but don’t down beat readers over the head with it.

3. Sign Up for FairShare

Fairshare, powered by content-matching service Attributor, is hands-down the best free tool for finding matches of your blog content.

It’s fast to sign up for and easy to use. Just provide FairShare with your RSS feed and subscribe to the one it generates to receive updates on matches to your content it finds. Whether you are just interested in tracking where your content is used or are actively enforcing it, it is an invaluable tool.

4. Use Google Alerts for Static Content

You likely have static content on your site that isn’t in your RSS feed and, thus, isn’t protected by FairShare. Visit Google Alerts and create alerts for each page using unique phrases in quotes. Then, you’ll receive RSS or Email alerts when the content appears elsewhere on the Web.

As an alternative, you can use Plagium with its free weekly reports.

5. Add an RSS Footer

There are literally dozens of plugins for nearly every major platform that can do this, but it’s important to add a footer to your RSS feed. Since that is the most common way your site will be scraped and republished, you should add something to it that ideally links back to your site and/or adds some kind of copyright notice (perhaps one similar to the footer of your site).

You can also use a digital fingerprint, string of letters and numbers that should be unique to your site, and create a Google Alert for it to track where your RSS feed appears on the searchable Web.

Bottom Line

Though I’ve already harped on the benefits of content tracking as a statistics metric, there is much more that Webmasters can do to protect their content, all without filing a single cease and desist letter or takedown notice.

Since all of these steps can be taken in under an hour’s time, it makes sense to take a moment, make sure that your site is up to code, your content is tracked and your feed is protected. Though you can’t stop everyone from misusing your content, no matter how much enforcement you do, there are simple steps that can reduce infringements and help you reach out to new audiences at the same time.

Clearly, this is time well spent even if ongoing enforcement isn’t.

Disclosure:I have consulted for Attributor in the past and my current company, CopyByte.com, uses their paid products.

When people talk about content detection, they are usually putting it into some copyright-related context. Whether it is YouTube’s content ID system, image matching for tracking plagiarists/preventing orphans or simple duplicate text searching to track violators of their license, most people think of content detection as a means to track and stop copyright violations.

Sadly, this site too is guilty of that. However, I want to take time today to highlight one of the more important uses of content detection, audience analytics.

Most bloggers put some kind of analytics on their site to track visitors, referrals, etc. But if their revenue doesn’t come from online ads, it is more about understanding your audience than it is tracking actual page views. The statistics themselves are just a means to an end.

However, there is a very good chance that a significant portion of your audience is actually on other sites. But unless you track your content, you may never be aware of it.

Every Site is Different

Last year content tracking service Attributor announced the results of its TrueAudience study. It found, for the publishers that it checked, that the off-site audience was 1 and a half times greater than the audience on the site itself. This meant that, for every two people reading the content on the publisher’s site, three were seeing it elsewhere.

Since the Attributor study focused more on larger publishers, who will likely have higher levels of copying, the results will obviously not be that dramatic for smaller bloggers. However, virtually everyone who publishes to the Web will see some copying and, through that, will have some of their audience on other sites.

Ignoring this is like telling your statistics program to ignore every X visitor without any understanding of what number X is. If you want to know your audience, you have to go where they are.

Given the wide range of sites and the different situations they are in, it is impossible to even offer good estimates without at least getting some facts.

Referrals and Linkbacks

To be certain, you can track some of this with your existing tools. Referrals will alert you to when someone visits your site from another page and trackbacks/pingbacks will alert you instantly when someone has linked to your content.

However, there are several problems with these. Referrals are limited to when people actually click links. This requires both the site to link to you and a user to actually click the link. Given that the vast majority of visitors don’t click referral links, it could never actually happen, even with attributed uses. Also, referrals also track sites that simply link without using any content, making it a challenge to find actual audience members on other sites.

Though trackbacks and pingbacks don’t require anyone to click the link, they also focus mostly on sites that simply link to your blog. Furthermore, there is a huge issue with spam and many sites that duplicate your content may be filtered out, correctly or incorrectly, as such.

These tools are powerful, but they are not actual substitutes for following your content on the Web.

Getting Started

If you’re new to the idea of tracking your content, meaning you probably aren’t a regular reader of this site, here are a few suggestions to get you started.

1. FairShare: A free service provided by content tracking company Attributor, FairShare subscribes to your RSS feed and publishes a private one for you that tracks where it finds your content. Very useful for sites with a low-to-moderate level of copying.
2. Tineye: Though somewhat limited, Tineye is the best visual search engine available and definitely the best free search. Great for visual artists to find how their work is being used.
3. Plagium: If you have static content and can’t use FairShare, Plagium is a good alternative. Receive weekly alerts of new matches for free, works like a hybrid between Google Alerts and free Copyscape, other tools well worth looking into.

These are all great, free services that you can use to track your content and get a slightly better understanding of your audience.

Bottom Line

When I was running a personal literature site, I was proud of my traffic stats but was stunned to find out that my audience off the site was many times larger than it was on my site. Much of the use was legitimate, including use in compilations and online magazines, but much of it was plagiarism. Using this information, I reached out and encouraged legitimate use, even participating in sites and discussions that properly used my content, and decided to tackle the plagiarists.

The system worked very well for me. It let me meet many people and reach out to a whole new group of people. It also let me convert some cases of mistaken identity into legitimate uses and stop plagiarists by the hundred.

Though I eventually abandoned my site, there is no doubt that tracking my content helped me expand my audience and my understanding of it. These two things are at least as valuable, if not more so, than the copyright uses for many bloggers and smaller publishers.

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

When it comes to tracking content across the Web, Copyscape is, for the most part, the brand name to know.

This reputation has been very well earned. They recently took top honors in a round of plagiarism checker testing services, which put them against several much more expensive services.

However, competitors have begun to emerge. Some, such as FairShare offer more features and more free results and others, such as CopyGator, offer great convenience. Despite this, especially for static content, Copyscape has remained the gold standard.

But a new service hopes to provide a new challenge. Plagium, a copy detection system by Septet Systems, provides a very similar service to Copyscape but adds additional free features and uses Yahoo! rather than Google to perform its searches.

The question is how does it stack up and, to measure that, I put the service through a battery of tests, using my well-copied and plagiarized literary works as the measuring stick.

About Plagium

The comparisons between Plagium and Copyscape are obvious, however, the default interface of Plagium is not to provide a URL to be checked, as with Copyscape, but a textbox to paste your text. Though this is less convenient, it actually, in my experience, provides better results as the plagiarism checker is only examining the content, not the surrounding text (navigation, footer, etc.).

However, if you prefer the convenience of just providing the URL, you can click the “Check URL” link and get a more Copyscape-like interface.

Plagium’s results add an interesting new feature called the “Timeline”, which shows roughly when the various reuses went online. This lets you prioritize your actions based upon either the most recent or the least current matches. However, as neat as the feature is, it can get cluttered on works that have a lot of copies and it isn’t exactly clear in the beginning what all of the elements mean, especially the sizes of the bubbles.

However, the most powerful feature of Plagium is its alert system. If you register for a free account, you can have the service track your text and alert you in a weekly email to any new copies it finds. You can also subscribe to an RSS feed of the results.

With this feature, Plagirum becomes something of a FairShare targeted at static content. Where FairShare requires an RSS feed to parse (though there are hacks that can be used to get static content into the system), this can work on any text that can be pasted into the system.

What is amazing about this is that Copyscape only offers the URL search and ten results free. It’s paid accounts, five cents a search, allows users to paste text and receive unlimited results. They also provide a sentry service, which monitors 10 pages once a week for about $5 per month.

However, Plagium currently offers all of these features for free. A representative for the company said that they are providing it for free to “attract paying customers for custom information tracking system development work,” though the site does also accept donations.

But not much of this matters if the plagiarism detection isn’t up to code. So I decided to put the system to a quick test to see how it handles some of my most plagiarized works.

The Tests

For the purpose of this test I ran five of my works through both Plagium, Copyscape (using the text paste feature) and, as a baseline, I ran a statically improbably phrase from each work through Google.

In each case I looked and attempted to verify that at least most of the results were not false positives. However, it is possible that there are some non-matches or additional duplicates included within the mix.

The results of the tests are below:

Poem 1

The first poem was a 224-wrord poem that was known to be widely plagiarized.

The first test showed that Plagium found approximately 17% more matches than Copyscape. Copyscape, for example, did not find my own site though Plagium listed it first.The page is listed in Google.

Still, the Google results trumped both of the two very handily and provided a large amount of additional results. However, the actual number of results is far lower than the number provided as it appears many of the Google results were duplicates where the same page had multiple URLs.

Poem 2

The second poem is a 279 word poem also known to be heavily plagiarized.

In this test, Plagium outperformed Copyscape by over 100%. However, Plagium does suffer from some duplication issues. For example, my site has two pages listed with the work on it though, once again, it doesn’t appear at all in Copyscape. However, even with this, there are far more unique results in Plagium.

Google once again trumped both of them but the duplication in Google makes that only useful for baseline, not an exact number.

Story 1

For this test I used a 1550 word short story with very limited reuse.

(*)In this test all three essentially tied. The difference between the 5s by Plagium and Google was the four matches they found on my site. All three found the exact same reuse, which is a legitimate copy of the work on another site.

In this case, they all three performed the same.

Prose 1

For this test, I used a 785 word short story with a modest amount of known reuse.

In this case, Copyscape was the clear winner. Not only did Plagium return fewer results, but the six results were really just 2 as 4 results were from my site and the other 2 from the same forum. Copyscape, on the other hand, delivered 10 matches, at least 4 of which were unique.

Google’s results, on the other hand, contained 20-25 duplicates, making its number closer to the mid 20s.

Prose 2

For this test I used a 202 word prose piece with a moderate amount of known plagiarism.

In this case, Plagium found three unique matches, including my site, that were not in Copyscape. Google did find more matches than both, but once again there was a serious duplication issue. At least nine items in Google’s results were duplicates, meaning that the number is closer to 15-18 results.

Still, this was a clear case where Plagium found results that Copyscape missed.

Results

In all five tests, Google outperformed both Plagium and Copyscape. However, it contained a very high amount of duplicate results and the benefit was likely minimal. In the contest between Plagium and Copyscape, Plagium found more matches three of the times, Copyscape did better in one test and they tied in one.

It appeared to me that Copyscape was not producing the number of matches it once did. The second poem, for example, is the same one I used when comparing Copyscape to itself in 2007. In that testing, it first found no results, then ten results, then 31. With today’s test, it found 9 even though the actual number of copies has remained fairly flat.

Whether this is because Copyscape does not work as well with pasted text (the first tests were done with the URL function) or because changes have limited the results it is producing, it is clear that it is not as effective as it once was for finding all of the results for a work.

However, it is important to note that this is far from a comprehensive comparison of the two service. These are just five very limited cases. Everyone else’s mileage will vary.

Bottom Line

In the end Plagium’s results were very solid and it actually performed better than Copyscape in most tests. Whether this is a fluke or a sign of something greater, remains to be seen.

However, since Plagium is completely free, there’s no harm in trying it out and I actively encourage you to do so. You can also experiment with the alerts feature and see if it works well for your content (I haven’t seen any results yet in the few that I set up).

Though I’m not ready to recommend Plagium as the sole plagiarism checker one should use, I don’t think I’ll ever reach that point with any product, but it is a very solid addition pulling in some very competitive matching numbers.

If Plagium isn’t a part of your plagiarism detection toolbox, it should be. The results are solid from what I’ve seen, the features are very powerful and, best of all, it is completely free. You can’t ask for much more out of a plagiarism checker.

Personally, I’ll probably start relying more on Plagium for my static content and continue to use FairShare for items already within an RSS feed. This works well with the intentions and limitations of the two services.

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.

Copy Alerts (previous coverage), a service that allowed users to track where their content appears on the Web, has shut its doors, thus ending its service its alerts. Its home page has been replaced with a very brief announcement that directs visitors to this site.

Copy Alerts functioned a bit like a Google Alerts and Copyscape mashup. It allowed users to enter a URL for a page and then receive email alerts when copies of the content appeared, combining the input method of Copyscape with the notification method of Google Alert.

Though Copy Alerts has had much of its ideal functionality replaced by newer services, including FairShare, it still remained a viable service for static pages without RSS support.

Copy Alerts replaced an earlier Copyscape-like search service entitled Bitscan, which used a different methodology than Copyscape and returned different, but still relatively valid results.

Though it doesn’t seem many people were using Copy Alerts, it was still a very interesting service that filled a good niche in this field. It is sad to see it go.

(Note: After writing this article, I am thinking about creating a static page for this site that highlights the list of plagiarism detection applications and services and would be updated as new services opened/closed. Do you have any thoughts on that? Do you think there would be enough interest?)

FairShare, unlike Attributor’s current business service, is targeted at bloggers and Webmasters who want to track how their content is being used and where, but do not require advanced tools and filtering. It works with Creative Commons licenses and tracks where content reappears, how much is used, if the content is linked and if the site displays any advertisements.

Though the service carries with it many different limitations, for bloggers that can not afford or don’t have the time to use a more advanced system, it is likely a very good choice.

How it Works

The principle behind FairShare is simple. After registering for the service, users are then asked to provide the URL of their feed. Then, after doing so, they are asked to select a Creative Commons License (if any) for their work.

Once the process is completed, they are then given the URL of a new feed to follow. It is a feed that will contain the matches that FairShare detects, using similar, though slightly more limited, technology as the regular Attributor system.

The feed will list information about the matches including the domain that the match was found on, the percentage of the original article that was copied, the number of words copied, whether the match site links back, whether it displays ads and provide a link to a FairShare comparison page, where the creator can look at the two works side by side.

If the content has a Creative Commons License, the feed will also show you if each of the elements are compliant with the terms you set forth.

The idea behind FairShare is that users will be able to go through their feed in their regular reader, see which matches are compliant, do comparisons on those which are not and then take appropriate action on their own.

The Good

The greatest advantage of FairShare is that it takes simplicity to a new extreme. Outside of selecting your license, there are no options to deal with or figure out. You simply provide the site your feed, select your content license and subscribe to the RSS feed it generates. Nothing more needs to be done.

The matching technology of FairShare seems to be very solid overall. FairShare and Attributor both rely on their own search engine and database, instead of using Google or Yahoo!. Though this is a risky move that has not worked well for others, usually due to limited database size, it seems Attributor’s results are about on par with results that can be achieved through hand Google searches.

All totaled, FairShare and Attributor both use the same database of roughly 35 billion pages, making it many times larger than most similar services.

FairShare also works with nearly 20 different languages, with more likely on the way, making one of the only choices for many international users.

Finally, the FairShare service is completely free. Though Attributor has not announced if they plan to release a more advanced pay version at a later date, the service is completely free to use and test. If one decides that they no longer want to use the service, all that they have to do is unsubscribe from the feed(s).

FairShare holds a great deal of promise for small to medium sized bloggers. However, this is not to say that the service is right for everyone nor that it is without its limitations.

Drawbacks and Limitations

Though the simplicity of FairShare is one of its greatest strengths, it is also a weakness. The user currently has no control over the exact matches they receive. Many of the matches are going to be ones that are barely over the limit for detection and may not be of much interest to the user. Also, if the user is only interested in matches that are infringing, they’ll have to wade through results that are compliant with their license. Users can, however, subscribe to a weekly summary feed and Attributor does plan to introduce more feed options in the future.

(Note: The feed to my right is not the FairShare feed for PT but for another, much larger, site that I work with.)

Second, also related to the issue of simplicity, there is no way to filter or sort though the matches. There is no way to prioritize or organize matches using the system, unless one uses an RSS reader that makes it possible to do so on their local computer. Even then though, the filtering and sorting will have to be done by hand.

Also, the FairShare system has no compliance tools built in. Though it can help users detect matches of user-supplied content, it is their responsibility to determine what they want to do about any infringements and how they want to do it.

The FairShare system is also limited in its reliance on RSS. Sites that do not have RSS will not be able to use the service and sites that use partial feeds may not get very good matches. Also, the service will not parse any content not on your feed, meaning that pages and content too old for the feed will not be checked. However, unlike Copygator, the service WILL find matches on non-RSS sites.

Finally, sites that have a large volume of matches will find themselves quickly buried in the number of results produced. FairShare feeds can easily produce hundreds of results per day, many of them not of a high priority, forcing a Webmaster to go through the feed every few hours and make quick decisions about which cases to follow up on.

In short, the service is a good solution for small to medium-sized bloggers that don’t expect to see more than a few dozen matches per day. More established ones might need a more advanced solution to avoid being buried in a large number of results that can’t be easily filtered.

Future Plans

As mentioned above, Attributor has stated that they plan on expanding their FairShare offerings by including more feed choices, allowing users to only receive the matches that they want. Also, they plan to provide additional licensing options, for those that don’t wish to use their own license scheme instead of a CC license.

Obviously many of these features will be available only farther down the the beta cycle, but may be reasons for some to consider jumping on board now and seeing how the service works, even if it is not a current match for them right now.

Conclusions

Overall, FairShare is a system to be extremely excited about. For most bloggers the system will work very well and provide all of the power that they need. Though others may require a more advanced system to help them sort through and prioritize matches, most bloggers will not have that issue.

Considering that the service is free, there is little harm in trying it. As I mentioned above, users can unsubscribe from their FairShare feeds at any time if they feel that the service isn’t working.

Despite it’s flaws and limitations, FairShare does provide a great deal to get excited about, namely that it is a simple, free content tracking tool that uses technology on par with a professional service. Though the system is still in beta, and users should expect a few bugs from time to time, it has worked fairly well in my testing and is worth at least a shot.

Disclosure: I have worked as a consultant for Attributor.