But while the approach to integration is new, the big idea behind the service is still very much the same. iCopyright Article Tools + Syndication places various badges on your site that invites people to license content through it.

You, through your Conductor control panel can set the services offered, the prices charged for those services and even set many of them to be free.

But is it something you should add to your site? The answer truly depends on what you’re looking for in your syndication tools.

What is iCopyright Article Tools Plugin?

To be clear, iCopyright Article Tools is not intended as a replacement for other sharing services, such as those that encourage posting to Facebook, Twitter, etc. Not only does iCopyright not provide those services, but they published a report in 2009 that said such tools may increase infringement.

Instead, iCopyright’s tools are aimed exclusively, or almost exclusively, at those who want to encourage paid licensing of their content.

To do this, the plugin first has you sign up for an iCopyright Conductor account, which will require you to fill out a very long form with a great deal of information about you, your site and your work. Once you’ve done that and gotten your publication ID, you should be able to sign in and start adding the plugin’s toolbars to your site.

On that front, iCopyright’s plugin has two different toolbars you can add to your post, either a horizontal or vertical toolbar. Here’s the horizontal one:

[icopyright horizontal toolbar]

The service also adds and interactive copyright notice, such as this one:

[interactive copyright notice]

(Note: All of these toolbars are functioning so you can play with them, however, bear in mind that this article, as with the rest of this site, is licensed under a Creative Commons License and NOT under these terms.)

Clicking on the toolbar will open up a popup window that lets you license the content in a variety of ways including sending via email, printouts (including both by you and created by iCopyright), reposting on other sites, and other publication services.

In each case, iCopyright handles the calculation of the price (if any), the transaction and the generation of the license for the creator. In exchange, iCopyright takes a cut of the revenue earned from the transaction, an amount that varies based on what rights are being secured.

The end result, theoretically, is that users who want to license can do so easily through iCopyright, which in turn makes the process as simple as possible for the buyer an makes it hands-free for you as the creator.

But as great as that sounds, it doesn’t mean that iCopyright Article Tools plugin is right for you or for your site.

Are iCopyright’s Article Tools Right For You?

The beautiful thing about iCopyright’s Article Tools is that they enable any content creator, big or small, to get involved in licensing their content. Most such clearance agencies either only or primarily represent larger copyright holders, such as newspapers, magazines, etc. and don’t do much for smaller players like bloggers.

iCopyright not only lets such creators get into the game, but also gives them very granular control over prices. You can determine how much you want to charge for virtually every way you can license your work, including setting tiered pricing, as well as disabling/enabling various licensing systems.

That being said, that granular control comes at a price. Though installing the plugin is simple, setting it up, including signing up for your account and setting your pricing is going to take a significant amount of time and it comes with a pretty steep learning curve too.

The process, unfortunately, isn’t too much better if you already have a “Creators” account with iCopyright as you will have to have iCopyright convert your account over for it to work properly.

What this means is that iCopyright only practical for those who are serious about turning content licensing into a revenue source and not for people who just want to make it easy to let others email their articles (there are many other plugins/services for that).

It’s also worth noting that the plugin and its toolbars are a bit rough around some of the edges. In testing the plugin, I ran into a series of bugs, mostly revolving around the use of my old Creators account.

Fortunately, most of those bugs were resolved in the 1.3 update (though old accounts still need to be converted). There are also minor issues such as my theme not liking the plugin, causing it to display the toolbars on the front page as well as the single posts.

Most importantly though, I don’t think many bloggers are going to see any revenue from licensing their content in this manner. There simply doesn’t seem to be enough interest in this kind of paid licensing of blogger and smaller creator content as most of the sharing of such content is done via social networking and via tools that don’t require a license at all.

Even though iCopyright has licensed nearly 3 million articles this year, most of that is, almost certainly, from the company’s larger partners.

That being said, iCopyright may find an audience with mid-sized publishers with these tools. Sites that perhaps are too small to be considered a “big fish” but still large enough and in a good niche to see at least some licensing.

Bottom Line

Someone who is casually interested in licensing probably will find these tools to be overwhelming in terms of complexity and underwhelming in terms of rewards. The true niche for this product is slightly upfield, with mid-sized publishers who can expect to earn some revenue, but not enough to warrant creating an in-house licensing system.

But even with that there are still some rough edges that need to be polished and definitely some room to improve the simplicity of the entire process on the creator side (as opposed to the purchaser side, which is very straightforward).

It’s also worth noting that iCopyright Article Tools are incompatible with Creative Commons Licenses, unless you use the tools to sell commercial rights not granted in the CC license.

In the end, if you’re in the niche that’s best served by these tools, you should definitely give them a try. But if you’re not, you’ll probably want to take a pass and find other ways to benefit from sharing, such as focusing more on social media.

Disclosure: I have done paid consulting for iCopyright in the past.

Things are starting to slow up a bit for copyright news as the holidays approach and things get a little more quiet in the courts across the world. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have a great show lined up with updates on the Viacom/YouTube case, the U.S. Copyright Group and a flashback for Patrick and I as we go back (to the past) to talk about circumventing game lock out devices on systems past.

This week’s stories include:

• Viacom Appeals YouTube Case
• U.S. Copyright Group Drops 1000s of Lawsuits
• iCopyright Sues Former Partner AP
• XBox Modding Case Dropped
• Wikileaks Exposes U.S. Involvement in Spanish Copyright Law
• LimeWire to Close
• Avast Gets Creative With Piracy

You can download the MP3 file here (direct download). Those interested in subscribing to the show can do so via this feed.

Show Notes

About the Hosts

Jonathan Bailey

Jonathan Bailey (@plagiarismtoday) is the Webmaster and author of Plagiarism Today (Hint: You’re there now) and works as a copyright and plagiarism consultant. Though not an attorney, he has resolved over 700 cases of plagiarism involving his own work and has helped countless others protect their work and develop strategies for making their content work as hard as possible toward their goals.

Patrick O’Keefe

Patrick O’Keefe (@iFroggy) is the owner of the iFroggy Network, a network of websites covering various interests. He’s the author of the book “Managing Online Forums,” a practical guide to managing online communities and social spaces. He maintains a blog about online community management at ManagingCommunities.com and a personal blog at patrickokeefe.com.

Have any suggestions for the 3 Count? Let me know via Twitter @plagiarismtoday.

1: iCopyright Sues Associated Press For Breach of Contract, Unfair Competition

First off today, content tracking and licensing company iCopyright is now suing one of its former partners, the Associated Press, saying that the news service failed to complete the contract between the two by not promoting its licensing tools and has been developing a competing service using inside information. The AP has denied those allegations saying that iCopyright owes some $130,000 in unpaid fees and that was the cause for the contract termination. iCopyright is seeking an injunction against the AP’s “news registry” and monetary damages. Disclosure: I have done unpaid work with iCopyright and considered their Discovery service in my consulting practice.

2: Eircom Continues ’3-strike’ Policy

Next up today, Irish ISP Eircom has announced that it is continuing its “3 Strikes” procedure where it sends suspected file sharers warning notices when they are notified of infringement. This comes after competitor UPC’s recent court victory saying that such measures were not required under Irish law. However, though disconnection is an option and Eircom is sending out about 1,000 letters per week, the ISP has not disconnected a user and considers such a move to be a last resort.

3: ‘View’ Star Wins Copyright Case

Finally today, “View” co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck has won her lawsuit against author Susan Hassett, who accused Hasselbeck of infringing on her cookbook “Living with Celiac Disease”. According to Hassett, Hasselbeck’s cookbook, “The G Free Diet” was too close to her own, prompting her to sue. However, the judge in the case disagreed saying that the was no substantial similarity between the two works, dismissing the case.

Suggestions

That’s it for the three count today. We will be back tomorrow with three more copyright links. If you have a link that you want to suggest a link for the column or have any proposals to make it better. Feel free to leave a comment or send me an email. I hope to hear from you.

Want the Full Story?

Tune in every Wednesday evening at 6 PM ET for the live recording of the Copyright 2.0 Show or wait and get the edited version Friday right here on Plagiarism Today.

The 3 Count Logo was created by Justin Goff and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License.

Copyright licensing and content tracking firm iCopyright announced earlier this week a new excerpt service for its customers. The service, entitled “EZ Excerpt” is designed to encourage visitors to consider whether they should license the content they are about to copy and also discuss fair use.

iCopyright has been the subject of controversy over fair use issues in the past, most recently regarding Canada’s CBC, and is attempting to mitigate those issues while working to make the licensing process more clear and prominent to users.

The new system, which is already available to current iCopyright users with the latest toolbar installed, attempts to be proactive in reaching out to users by asking for a license, but it remains to be seen if this will be off-putting to visitors or if it will help better explain the licensing process.

How it Works

The basic idea of EZ Excerpt is that it works in conjunction with the existing iCopyright buttons/badges to add an extra layer of protection. When a user goes to copy a portion of an article protected by such a badge, they are given a prompt that asks if the user would like to post the excerpt to the Web.

If the user clicks “Yes”, they are then given the choice of either purchasing a license or clicking a “fair use” link that outlines whether the use is a fair one that doesn’t need a license. iCopyright provides a stock fair use page for this purpose though publishers are free to create their own.

The word count of the excerpt is automatically calculated based on the amount copied and, from that, the cost is tallied. If the user purchases a license, they are given code to embed into their post, including plain text, HTML and HTML blockquote formats.

Once embedded, the quoted content is displayed along with a small iCopyright Logo or ICL (referred to as an ICICLE) that links to a license page. This not only services as a public indication of the license, but also lets Discovery, iCopyright’s content tracking system, know that it is a legitimate license.

All in all, the system seems to be fairly seamless. However, the question is whether bloggers and other excerpters will react positively to this new approach at encouraging licensing.

My Thoughts

EZ Excerpt reminds me a bit of Tynt’s Insight service (formerly known as Tracer) in the way it is activated on the act of copying text. However, where Tynt stealthily alters what is copied to include a link, iCopyright has a JavaScript popup that encourages you to buy a license.

I’ve long been uncomfortable with the way Tynt modifies the clipboard contents without warning, forcing cleanup after it has been pasted (though this feature can be disabled, as it is in Plagiarism Today) and I do feel that iCopyright’s system is a bit more honest. However, it is also more annoying in that popups are almost universally despised and, though a use can just click “No” or “Quit Asking Me” it is still an extra step. Also, clearly, fewer people are likely to pay even a token amount for a quote than include a link back, as with Tynt.

Though iCopyright’s service is more aggressive, it will also likely result in more sales. However, what is less clear is if those sales will justify the annoyance experienced by other users. That will depend largely on the site and how the service is used.

Finally, on the fair use issue, I’m not sure how well the new system addresses it. The fair use link is mixed in with all the information about buying the rights to the excerpt. If one isn’t looking for it, its hard to see and find.

I worry that this approach may confuse more people than it helps. By having the request come up by default, it might seem as if iCopyright has already made the judgement that this not a fair use and is trying to push people into buying a license, not also trying to explain about fair use.

Though the copyright savvy might not see it that way, one thing I know well is that most people are not very copyright savvy, especially on matters of fair use.

Bottom Line

The system is very new, only available for a few days, and doesn’t seem to be widely adopted. It will take some time for adoption level to pick up and then we can see how it is received. In the meantime, it does not seem to be available to users of iCopyright’s Creators service, the one for bloggers and smaller publishers.

Still, I have a feeling that this could be the trend we start seeing when it comes to content licensing, more aggressive and more proactive approaches to the problem. Where traditionally publishers have just added the badges to their site and trusted their visitors to do the right thing, now it seems as if publishers are going to get more aggressive about promoting their licensing options.

Though what iCopyright is doing isn’t technically DRM, it doesn’t do anything to prevent the copying, it will still likely be greeted similarly to it. As the CBC controversy illustrated, many aren’t comfortable with licensing text content by the word, as iCopyright does, and a more aggressive approach probably won’t win any further minds.

That being said though, it may get others to think about these issues and, hopefully, think twice before copying outside of what is allowed by fair use.

Disclosure: I am a former paid consultant for Attributor, a competitor to iCopyright.

Video

Whether you are a writer looking for plagiarized copies of your work or a teacher/professor checking academic papers for plagiarism, Google is your friend.

Google provides, by far, the easiest way to perform quick plagiarism checks, whether to find if a work is plagiarized or has been the victim of plagiarism, it does so for free and it does it in a very robust way.

Though there are a lot of great tools out there with many great uses, Google remains my first stop for plagiarism checks in most cases as it is simply faster, cheaper and more accurate than most other tools.

Though you shouldn’t use it exclusively and definitely should not shy away from using additional tools, you need Google in your arsenal and you need to learn how to use it well. Otherwise, you may find yourself spending more time and money than needed while not getting the results you desire.

Why Google

When deciding where to start with your plagiarism check, consider the five following reasons to start with Google:

1. Human Analysis is Best: It is pretty trivial for a human to find a statistically improbable phrase that is likely to be reused. Some plagiarism checkers don’t ignore quoted and cited content and all search for content that is likely repeated without plagiarism. This means a few seconds spent on the front end finding a good phrase can save hours on the backend filtering through false positives. Furthermore, over-reliance on more automated systems can result in users taking the results as gospel and not performing adequate human evaluation. This can be a tremendous mistake.
2. Immediate, Accessible and Free: Even a complicated Google search is returned within a few seconds. Some take days to process matches while even the faster ones usually take a few minutes, this hinders their usefulness in checking hunches. Also, Google is free to use and is available anywhere you have an Internet connection, even via your phone. The service that fits in your schedule and budget is the one you will use and if you don’t use a plagiarism checker, it can do no good at all.
3. Accuracy: In my experience, Google produces far fewer false positives than even more advanced plagiarism checkers. It also has a very large database with billions of pages, including PDFs, Word files and other non-HTML formatted content. It also updates in very close to real time with Google News and blog search, making it great for finding instances of plagiarism that take place quick after publication.
4. It’s What You Care About: If your work is plagiarized and the plagiarism isn’t in Google, does it exist? It’s a valid question and, if you’re a content creator worried about SEO, the answer is probably no. Other checkers that don’t work off Google’s database may cause you to spend time and resources on leads that don’t matter. Other databases are usually slower to update. Also, Google tends to do a good job of prioritizing matches for you, starting with those that are more important. Finally, Google, in my experience, is the most popular means for students to plagiarize their work, making it a logical tool to backtrack any suspected plagiarism.
5. It’s Dead Simple: Everyone knows how to do a Google search. Not everyone knows how to format a paper for submission to another service. It’s a method anyone can use with almost no training at all, including those easily intimidated by technology.

In short, Google is easy to use, very fast and provides very accurate, broad results for the total price of free. Though it isn’t the perfect plagiarism checker by any stretch. When others ask me to quickly check a work for them, it is where I usually start. If something trips my sensors, I will often times use another checker, such as Plagium or CopyScape to drill down deeper.

In short, there is no intended slight in this of other plagiarism checkers, in fact, there are many legitimate needs that they are needed to fill.

Google’s Limitations

As great as Google is, there are still limitations to what it can do and those limitations are often filled very well through other services. Consider the following:

1. Organization and Resolution Assistance: Google simply provides results, it is up to you to organize them and take action on them. Services like Attributor and iCopyright Conductor, which are aimed at larger content creators, and Turnitin and SafeAssign, which are aimed at schools, provide that organization. This makes managing large case loads much more bearable.
2. Additional Sources: Plagiarism checkers that specialize in academic environments, including Turnitin, include additional databases that are not available to Google including private article databases and research paper.
3. Full-Work Matching: Though Google is great for quick checks and finding potential matching pages, determining what content is matching and which isn’t is a headache by hand. More robust checkers will highlight the duplicate content and make it easy to see at-a-glance what has been copied. Plagiarism checkers such as Copyscape, which is based on Google, and Plagium are natural additions to Google in this area. Also, collusion detection such as WCopyFind can check two suspect documents, such as one Google suspects, and highlight matching portions.

In short, these tools have a time and a place. I still recommend them highly and use them widely depending on the project and situation. However, they do some of their best work after Google or another search engine has alerted the searcher to the possibility of plagiarism and a deeper look is needed to determine how significant the potential infraction is.

Bottom Line

When someone asks me to check and see if a work is plagiarized, especially if they are wanting me to see if the work appears anywhere else on the Web, I usually turn to Google first. Though other checkers are great, Google simply does the best job of letting me know how much copying the work has seen, who the most important infringers/likely sources are and if further research is needed.

Uunless Google alerts me that there is a likely problem, I know that other services will most likely be a waste of time that will possibly have me swimming through false positives or simply waiting for results. All in all, it is time lost that could be better spent elsewhere.

For most searches, Google is my primary tool of choice. Though it isn’t usually the last word on whether or not a work has been plagiarized, it tells me what I need to know and helps me better determine what I need to do next. It is my first choice for plagiarism checker, the default tool I reach for, but that doesn’t make it the only one I use.

Regardless, learning how to use Google for plagiarism detection and learning how to use it well should be the first priority for anyone wanting to find duplicate content, whether of their own work or to detect plagiarism in other’s. Without it, you won’t be as effective at plagiarism detection nor as able to perform the task.

Simply put, relying on a plagiarism checker to make decisions for you is a poor move, especially with the danger of false positives. Human judgement is the best and Google lets you exercise it some before bringing in the bigger guns.

A recent study by content licensing and tracking company iCopyright claims to have found a link between article tools, the links that let users email, Digg, save or otherwise interact with a story, and content misuse.

The premise is that article tools, by encouraging users to copy the content on a site for limited purposes, may actually be creating confusion on the reader’s part and encouraging them to make use of the content beyond the intention of the tool.

While this makes sense to some degree and the study’s research does seem to indicate that there is reason to believe article tools may incite some level of content misuse, there are also nagging issues and other problems with the study that make its findings, and its proposed solutions, seem less certain.

Basic Findings

The iCopyright study consisted of two parts, a survey of 787 mailing list users as to their habits with reusing content and article tools. The second part was a usability study conducted by an independent lab that compared iCopyright’s article tools to competing services.

The study found that, 99% of visitors use articles on various sites in ways other than simple viewing. This includes printing, saving, emailing and sharing links. Of those who interact with content, nearly 65% said that they did so “Frequently” and another 31% said they did so occasionally.

However, nearly half of those who used articles used it for what the study considered a commercial use. This is because, according to iCopyright, the tools provide no clear system to explain the intended use of the tools nor any clear means to enforce the wishes of the publisher. These tools became de facto copy machines that, according to the study, were repeatedly abused out of ignorance.

According to the study, copyright notices and other self-fixes failed to work. Usability testing showed that such notices were overlooked or missed and users simply printed as they wished, even if it was in violation of the license.

To make matters worse, removing the tools did not help as 96% of respondents said that, if an article were not available for print via an article tool, they would do so anyway, most commonly via the browser’s “print” feature. Also, 95% said they would email an article even if it were unavailable via an article tool, including 37% who said they would copy and paste the entire text of the work into the email, as opposed to 40% who would simply email the link.

(Note: I it worth observing that linking to an article in an email nor printing out portions (perhaps even the entire work) is illegal. Deep linking is legal, fair use allows usage of small portions of the original and implied license may cover certain other behaviors. Simply because the study reports on a behavior does not mean that it is illegal or immoral.)

Also interesting is that 64% of respondents said they would rather use supplied article tools as opposed to other solutions and that the most important tools were email, print, save, share and comment, in that order.

The study then went on to present iCopyright’s article tools, which have strict controls on how the content is used, as a solution to the problem and as an opportunity to turn such uses of the content into a revenue stream.

The statistics in this study are very interesting and very enlightening for anyone who is curious how end users interact with their content. However, the study isn’t without its flaws and potential issues that need at least some attention.

Minor Problems

Though the data in the study is interesting and useful, it does come with a few caveats that are important to remember.

First, the sampling on the survey makes it more likely to attract those who routinely share articles. Not only were participants already subscribers to iCopyright’s Clip&Copy, a news service targeted at those who are interested in finding articles to reuse, but they had identified themselves as “information workers” more likely to have a job that requires them to share news.

Also, this sampling is not likely to be a good representative of visitors to an average blog or site. As every site has a different audience with unique skills and tendencies, so will change the types and means of interactions.

Second, the definition of “commercial use” is used a bit loosely. The answer options on the related question are whether users copy the article for “Personal Use”, “To Share with Friends and Family”, To Share with Coworkers”, “To Share With Clients” and “All of the Above”.

However, the study only considered the first two options non-commercial even though not all times an article is sent to coworkers or even clients is it commercial. Though many of them may be, it isn’t all of them for certain.

Another issue I see is that, in one section making the case for using iCopyright’s tools, the article said the following:

One thousand visitors to a site might generate $90 in advertising, assuming a $30 CPM and three page views per visitor. However, those same 1,000 visitors can produce $1,000 or more in commercial use licenses, assuming a 1% conversion rate at $100 per license. When built in to article tools, content licensing can provide a return ten times that of advertising.

These numbers seem incredibly optimistic on both sides. a $30 CPM is very high and many times the norm, but may be obtainable by some sites (very few). However, a 1% conversation rate on a $100 is almost impossible to imagine, especially since responses on far less expensive products is often much lower.

Though this is seems to be a simple example with off-the-cuff numbers to make a point, it doesn’t seem to mesh with current realities, especially with the economic downturn.

However, the biggest problem is the study’s proposed solution, to use iCopyright’s article tools with their protection, is not well supported. There is no research about how many people would be willing to pay for an interaction or what they would do if confronted with a fee for an action and they don’t wish to pay for it.

The study had already showed that, without any article tools, users will revert to other means to interact with content. If they are confronted with a fee, even a reasonable one, and don’t wish to pay it, those tools are still there.

Say, for example, a site charges for a print out of a work, if the user doesn’t wish to pay, they can still use their browser’s print button, copy/paste, etc. The only difference is that this time the user will know the wishes of the publisher and may be discourages. However, exactly how big of a deterrent that is, is not fully answered.

Still, none of these issues stop the study from providing some interesting insight into the way article tools are used and how the affect copyright. It will be interesting to see if these results change any major publisher’s approach to article tools as a result.

The Big Picture

Though the study has its flaws and is, understandably, a promotion for iCopyright’s own article tools services, which include its iCopyright for Creators service (previous coverage), a service targeted at bloggers, it does have some interesting statistics and some great insights.

For me, the takeaways are simple. Article tools see a wide variety of use and, if your goal is to limit what users do with your content, they are not the way to go. If you have less restrictive licensing, such as with this site, they probably make sense as the study shows that users strongly prefer such tools over the alternatives.

However, standard article tools as a means of protecting content or limiting use is a poor choice. But given that users who want to share your content will do so, it makes sense, in my opinion, it makes sense to apply them and channel that energy through a system you have some control over. Yes, there will be abuse of the tools, but at least it is your system and not something completely outside your ability to enforce, monitor and track.

Whether you use iCopyright or another set of article tools, it is important to understand the advantages and the drawbacks. As smaller publishers, most people reading this don’t have to worry too much about the bottom line and whether each infringement is a dollar lost, something the target group for this study does, but we still have to develop effective content strategies to make our content work for us, not against us.

Disclosure: iCopyright has donated to this site in the past and I have consulted for Attributor, a company that competes with the Creators service (though not the licensing service).

But while they’ve always offered services for individual authors, their services were never very well targeted for bloggers, freelance journalists and amateur photographers. The process of registering is far too complicated and the effort has, traditionally, been unlikely to be justified by the reward.

However, last week they announced the opening of their newest service, Ozmo. Ozmo is a very different beast from the main copyright.com offering. Though it serves the same function as the main site, to help copyright holders license their content, it is targeted at your average Web publisher, including current Creative Commons users.

But while the combination of major licensing name and simple licensing tool might seem to be a win/win for content creators, there are several flaws with Ozmo that need to be addressed before most photographers or bloggers seriously consider using the service.

How it Works

The idea behind Ozmo is very simple. If you are a content creator, you register for an account on the service and then create a license for your work. You can choose, at this time, to license either text or images.

Once you determine the what content you want to license, you then provide a name for the license itself to be called, a description of it and select the files to include, if necessary.

After that, you determine the price of the license itself, which includes a difference for high- and low-resolution works when dealing with images, and a slew of other liensing options including the right to use the work in a live performance, in broadcast media, as part of a logo, etc.

You then get to add any special terms and conditions that you might want to add (such as limiting the use in adult content, etc.) and then add a Creative Commons License for non-commercial use if desired. To aid in CC integration, Ozmo uses the CC+ framework to fill the gap between non-commercial CC-licensed use and commercial, paid-for licensing.

Once you’ve done all this, as well as set up your profile (you can view the temporary one I created here), and link to it publicly.

From there, those interested in licensing your content can either find your work via links on your site (or RSS feed through the use of a FeedBurner Feedflare) or by searching the Ozmo site. Either way, you will be taken to a licensing page similar to this one. Where you can purchase the needed rights.

If this process sounds familiar to you, it is for a very good reason. iCopyright recently released its Creators service, which functions in much the same way, and RightsAgent, which recently closed its doors, also had a similar functionality.

The question then becomes how does Ozmo stack up to its competitors, both past and present. The answer is actually very mixed.

The Good

Ozmo, to its credit, gets a lot of things right.

First, the interface is very well crafted and easy to use. It is bright, colorful and uses easy-to-understand language for almost everything. Though there are several legalese licenses you have to move past to get to the actual licensing process, the actual content licensing is about on target for laypersons.

Second, the pairing with CC+ is truly magnificent. You can even use the system to create a license that will give away commercial rights, such as the one on this site, but it will warn you beforehand. Though it encourages you to use Ozmo to sell commercial rights, which is really the purpose of the service, it doesn’t force your hand. Furthermore, the CC+ buttons that you embed on your site look nice and work well.

Third, I really like the way that Ozmo breaks down the different potential uses. Separating between low and high resolution images as well as other uses that a copyright holder might wish to charge more for. The options aren’t so overwhelming as to be intimidating, but it does help the creator nail down an effective licensing scheme. This clearly comes from their experience on the commercial side. Still, I do find myself wishing for a way to differentiate based upon circulation as well, something it doesn’t do currently.

Finally, Ozmo does a great job connecting with and integrating with other services. Ozmo can import data from Facebook, use FeedBurner Feedflare, work with Picasa and the list is likely to expand moving forward. Ozmo has shown a great deal of dedication of not being a standalone product, but in working with the tools that bloggers already use every day.

However, as great as the things it gets right are, there are many other things that it falls very flat on.

Issues

Sadly, Ozmo is far from perfect, considering the following issues I noticed as I attempted to use the service:

1. Bulk Licensing: If you have a lot of images uploaded to your Flickr or hundreds of entries on your blog, it might take a very long while to license all of them on Ozmo. Though Ozmo offers a feature to license all photos on one page, it is done by URL. There is no means to use an RSS feed, thus ensuring future posts get licensed automatically and, with text works, you need to input the information for each article individually. It can be a very tedious process if you have hundreds of items. Picasa users, however, can do a direct import to their account.
2. Price: Ozmo takes a 30% fee on all of the transactions. Though it eats the transaction costs, the 30% is still very high, especially considering that iCopyright, currently, doesn’t take any cut at all and a more typical agent fee is around 10% to 15%. Many will be forced to raise their licensing rates to get the amount they desire.
3. Payment: The choice of Amazon as the payment broker seems rather odd to me. Though I have no real issue with Amazon, it doesn’t make much sense to use them exclusively when both PayPal and Google offer competing systems that are more widely used and have equal or better reputations. However, it was the decision to use Amazon that has created perhaps the greatest problem of all.

Through it all, the issue that was most unnerving to me took place when I tried to add my Amazon information so I could both buy a license (to test the full process) and set up to be paid (to see how it worked). I went through a series of lengthy pages on Amazon’s site to set up my account but, when it came time to set up my credit card, I ran into a brick wall. Amazon kept insisting that my credit card had expired, even though the expiration is in 2011.

This issue completely prohibited me from testing the rest of the service out and would have, in theory, both prevented me from being paid by a license purchaser or from paying to license someone else’s work through Ozmo.

In Comparison

Currently, there is no licensing system that I feel is 100% ready to change the game for bloggers and other Web content creators. Though iCopyright has a very strong system in Creators, it too has some flaws and glitches that need to be addressed as well as an expanded need for simplicity.

However, iCopyright’s flaws are not lethal to the system itself. Furthermore, with iCopyright, you do not have to register each individual work nor do you have to worry about the cut that iCopyright is going to take out of the licensing. On the flip side though, iCopyright does not offer a standalone search function that would allow a potential purchaser to discover the work on iCopyright’s site, thus bypassing the creator’s site completely. This could, theoretically, add an element of promotion on Ozmo that isn’t available in iCopyright.

In the end, both services have their good and their bad, but I think that iCopyright will be appropriate for the vast majority of people reading this. The ease of licensing and better price will far outstrip the partnership and promotional advantages of Ozmo. However it is clear that both products are in their early development stages and we will have to see how they evolve over time.

Conclusions

Two years ago, this seemed impossible. Right now we have two major licensing agencies, iCopyright and the CCC, that have both created competing products targeted at helping bloggers, large and small, license their work via the Web.

Though both systems have their flaws, they both show a great deal of dedication to reaching out to this new market and creating systems that could, one day, become commonplace on most sites. However, they will require a great deal of work to come into full fruition.

Still, these are very exciting times to be a blogger and I encourage anyone who is interested to get involved with one or both of the services listed, if for no other reason than to help these companies grow and improve their products.

The companies are making their investment, it is time for the creators to do the same if they want these services to thrive.

However, last week, Mike O’Donnell, the President and CEO of iCopyright, was kind enough to give me a guided tour of the backend. Though I wasn’t able to access anything hands on or experiment with the technology with my own content, that will have to wait until the service is available for iCopyright for Creators users, I was able to see what the service does, how it works and what it can do.

So here is a brief look at what the iCopyright Discovery system can do and how it will likely look when it is available for Creators users shortly. Please bear in mind that this is not a review, just a tour of the key features of the service.

The Basic Premise

The big idea of Discovery is this: Discovery parses your content as you put it up on the Web, accessing either a created XML file or your RSS feed, and then searches for copies of it on the Web.

The service then searches for matches of your content, highlighting ones that it determines to be the most important, and gives you options for remedying the situation. Among the actions it can perform are removal requests, which fundamentally DMCA notices, license requests, which goes through iCopyright’s existing licensing system, and forwarding to legal counsel.

This idea is fundamentally very similar to Attributor and Blogwerx, both of which are still in private testing. However, the execution of the system is going to be what is important. On that front, iCopyright has devised an interesting workflow system that seems to string the process together very well.

Setting Up Discovery

When a user first signs in to Discovery, the first page they’re likely going to head to is, oddly enough, the “Settings” page. The reason for this is that, without visiting the settings page, you have little control over the matches you see and you can’t use several of the remedy options.

From this page, you can set your enforcement agency, useful if you are part of a group that handles your copyright enforcement, and the email address to your legal counsel. This will let you enable addition redress steps down the road. However, the most important settings are the search sensitivity and risk assessment as they determine the matches you see down the road.

The search sensitivity feature allows users to tell Discovery how many matches they want. They can set it so that only the worst matches appear in the system or so that they see almost everything. This is done by tweaking the minimum match ratio, meaning how much of the original work must appear in the copy, the minimum risk factor, discussed below, the minimum site activity and the minimum number of copied words that must appear in the match, useful for sites with short posts.

The Risk Assessment tool is easily one of the most interesting features in iCopyright Discovery. It lets users set the criteria for determining how much of a risk a match site is. You do that by setting sliders for Unique Visitors, which looks at the estimated traffic of the site, the number of inbound links, whether the site displays ads or how much of the content it copies.

These sliders are intended to be abstract in nature and are used to indicate which attributes are more important than others. For example, if you set all to 10, they would be weighed equally. However, if you put one at 5 and the others at 10, the first one would be weighed much less.

These attributes, when combined with the site’s actual use of the content, are used to determine the risk level of the site itself. This, in turn, plays a major role in determining the priority the site is given when analyzing suspect pages.

Sorting Matches

Once you are done telling Discovery what matches you want to see, the system then does a refresh, which takes about an hour according to O’Donnell, and you can then view your matches or “suspects”.

The match sort is organized by a combination of variables, focusing heavily on suspect pages with the highest risk. For each suspect, the system displays the URL of the work, whether it displays ads, whether it links back to your site, roughly how many visitors it gets, the number of inbound links to the site, the match percentage and the risk.

From this page, you can go through the matches and either archive the match, which functions similar to Gmail’s archive function and takes no action, move it to the Whitelist, either pending or approved, or send it to the redress list.

If a site is moved to the whitelist, that means that the use is licensed and future matches from the site will be ignored. You have the option of telling the system to either ignore matches on the URL, the subdomain or the entire domain.

If you move it to the redress list, you can then take further action on the match, including licensing the work or filing a removal demand.

Taking Action

The redress list, as you see below, looks very similar to the suspect list and contains much of the same information. However, the options for what one can do with a suspect are different on this page.

From this page, you can then either offer the site a license, which will send out an email encouraging the site admin to go through the existing iCopyright system, file a link request or send a removal notice.

Removal notices, fundamentally, are DMCA notices though they are written so that, at this stage, they can be sent to Webmasters directly. Link requests are more like informal license offers, but ones where the only stipulation is a link back.

All of the letter types are fully customizable and Discover offers a templating system that lets you build your own letter that automatically inserts the necessary information.

Once you file a redress, you can then track the status of it in the Redress Offers Status page. From there, it will let you know if the redress has been completed and, if it hasn’t, makes it available to be escalated.

If a suspect match is moved to the escalation list, then the user has a whole new series of options for how to deal with the site.

The options include the ability to, forward the situation to your legal counsel (if set up), notify the ISP, which sends a more traditional DMCA notice, notify the enforcement agency (if set up), send a notice to the ad network or demand removal from the search engines.

All in all, the initial Redress List can be looked at as the cease and desist/licensing phase where the Escalation List deals more with the DMCA/lawyer phase.

However, no matter what redress steps you take, Discovery offers a powerful means to track and monitor the progress of the steps that you took.

Tracking and Monitoring

Once you’ve taken a redress action against a suspect site, you can then track and monitor everything that has to do with that particular match.

It provides much more than just a brief history of what has taken place, giving a detailed history of every email sent, comments left in the system, both automatic ones and ones left by the user, as well as other information about the site.

The idea is to maintain a record of every action, including emails, phone calls and other steps, for the purpose of aiding in any potential legal case.

Once the matter is resolved, escalated outside of the system or the match is whitelisted, the case can be archived and thus removed from the suspect pool, allowing you to move on to other matches.

Some personal thoughts

It is very hard for me to offer any real review of the service. Without actually being hands on with the service and using it against my own content, there is not much that I can do.

Right now there are many unknowns for me, including the following:

1. Match Detection: O’Donnell has said they are partnering with a major search provider to perform the detection but it remains to be seen how effective it is. Match detection is not easy, even with a big search partner, as Copyscape showed. The system will not be of much use if its match detection is not the best in its class.
2. Resolution Assistance: The hardest part about stopping a plagiarist is not composing the letter, but finding who to send it to. It is easily the biggest time sink in most of my cases and is the number one reason people approach me for help. It remains to be seen how effectively Discovery helps with this process.
3. Speed/Usability: Obviously, without actually using the system, I can’t tell how fast it moves and how much time it will save you. If the system is sluggish or error-prone, it could greatly hurt its usefulness.

This is not to say that these things are wrong with the current system, just that I don’t know right now and won’t until I can do a full review, likely later this year.

However, judging from what I can see, the system is very impressive. It looks very good, has a solid workflow built into it, though I somewhat disagree with having the ISP step be only available in the escalation section, and seems to be built with the user in mind.

What I like best about Discovery is how the user customizes the system to fit their needs, with their own definitions of what matches to worry about, their own letters and their own general strategy. Any such system should focus on automating what can be automated, but leaving the big decisions to the copyright holder.

What does worry me some is that the system is clearly geared toward larger clients. Discovery is designed to allow for multiple users to access an account and to work with attorneys as well as other rights enforcers. While those are great features for those that need them, it remains to be seen how the system will strip down for smaller copyright holders.

The other downside is that, according to O’Donnell, the version of Discovery for Creators will come with some kind of fee. Though pricing structure has not been discussed, he seemed confident that it would not be available for free.

Still, as these screenshots show, there is a lot to like in the Discovery system and the solution it promises.

It has a great deal of potential and Webmasters who are worried about tracking how their content is used should definitely take a serious look at what iCopyright has to offer.

Conclusions

There’s a lot of reason for me to be excited about the upcoming Discovery system. However, I have to restrain that excitement until I can use the system first hand and see both how effective it is and how smooth the process is.

No matter what though, I am happy to see that people are thinking about these issues and coming up with solutions. This has been a booming industry over the past few years and a lot of very smart companies are already involved and I am happy to be working in this field.

No matter what Discovery itself brings, it can only signal great things for copyright holders and Webmasters. Hopefully, this will help content creators not just enforce their rights, but understand how their work is being reused and encourage the kind of sharing that helps all involved.

Knowledge and tools can only help improve things, so long as those who use them do so wisely.

According to the press release, linked above, the service will search the Web for copies of the content, provide the creator with various means of redress and then monitor the site for compliance.

The service is not currently available with the iCopyright for Creators service, previously reported on here, but will be shortly. If you are not currently a user of the site, it may be a good time to sign up.

I have sent an email to iCopyright and I hope to gain access to a demo version so that I can test the service and provide a more thorough write-up shortly. Expect a review in the next couple of days.

Some Personal Thoughts

My first thoughts are that I am very excited about this service. iCopyright is a well-known and well-respected name in content licensing. Though their Creators service lacks functionality that prevents me from taking advantage of it, I highly recommend it to those that do not use CC licenses.

The pairing of licensing and detection services is a natural one, especially for larger customers that need to streamline the entire content control process. Whether bloggers and smaller users will benefit from this remains to be seen.

Though the press release makes it seem as if iCopyright functions similarly to other services such as Attributor, Blogwerx and other copy detection/resolution tools, its pairing with a strong license structure may give it an edge.

However, the real test of this service is going to be how accurate its detection is, how easy it makes it to handle unlicensed copies and how much value it is able to provide users. Until I’ve used the service, I won’t know.

Conclusions

If you haven’t signed up for iCopyright for Creators yet, now might be a good time. The licensing functionality is strong out of the box, especially for those who don’t use Creative Commons, and the promise of licensing, detection and cessation in one platform is compelling.

However, there are a lot of unanswered questions right now about the service including effectiveness, cost and features so I am not ready to get too excited. Still, it is worth noting that this will be available soon and could be a great boon to content creators.

I’m looking forward to giving this a more thorough review and updating this site with more information later.

Disclosure: iCopyright has contributed to this site. I am a consultant for Attributor.

That is one of the reasons that, on this site, I have tried very hard to cover content licensing as well as plagiarism and copyright infringement detection/cessation. My goal has always been to help Webmasters develop a balanced system for protecting and exploiting their work.

However, even as companies have risen to the challenge of helping bloggers detect and stop plagiarism and content theft, those that have attempted to make a business off helping bloggers license their content have, for the most part, fallen flat.

So where did these companies go wrong? What can be done to fix the problem? Is content licensing dead as a business model?

These are tough questions without easy answers.

The Problem Comes to Light

In late 2006, I hard written a post entitled Content Licensing: The Sensational Seven that detailed the best content licensing sites available at that time.

When I ran across the article a week ago, I realized that three of the services, Lisensa, Scoopt Words and Yepic had all either closed shop or had announced their closure.

But while three closures out of seven may be a good percentage, especially considering the failure rate of startups in general, it is important to note that two of the four remaining, Numly and Registered Commons, are non-repudiation services that allow bloggers to also affix license information and one of the two licensing services, Copyright.com, is a stalwart of the traditional media not targeted at bloggers.

Only one licensing service in the article, BlogBurst, was both targeted at bloggers and was still in business after a year and a half.

To the credit of those who closed, Lisensa was replaced by RightsAgent, which is still in operation but struggling to gain traction, Scoopt is continuing to offer their photography licensing service and Yepic, despite a promised closure date of June 8th, is still active (though various parts of the site seem to be in disarray).

It is clear that companies who try to make a living off of helping bloggers license their content for money are struggling but why is something of a mystery.

The answer, however, likely lies in the medium itself and the challenges that any company would face in trying to market free content for cash.

Not-So Happy Times

Theoretically, these should be good times for companies wanting to get in on licensing blog content. Creative Commons launched their CC+ initiative, which makes it possible to extend Creative Commons Licenses, making it easy to start such a business and build on the success off CC.

Most importantly though, largely thanks to Creative Commons, more bloggers than ever are aware of and thinking about content licensing. It is a popular topic for bloggers and becoming better understood every day.

The problem, however, is not a lack of bloggers. The problem is a lack of buyers. Though bloggers seem to be relatively easy to lure with promises of easy licensing and quick money, few seem to be willing to buy what they are selling.

The result is that most accounts make little, if any, money and the company stuggles to earn a profit off the few who do generate sales.

The reason for this is five fundamental flaws with licensing blog content for cash:

1. Quality: Though most blogs are good to the people who read them, very few are up to the standards of people who would want to pay money for content.
2. Content is Already Free: The content involved, in most cases, is already free on the Web and most bloggers will give permission for reuse with a simple letter and a promise of attribution. This also creates duplicate content issues and makes the purchaser second to publish the work, further reducing the work’s value to a potential buyer.
3. Limited Buyer Pool: Even if the work is seen to be of high value, there is a very small pool of potential buyers. Mainstream media outlets and blog networks are two obvious choices, but very few bloggers are going to pay for content they could easily write.
4. Paid Blogging: For most potential buyers, it is a better deal for them to contact a blogger and have them create custom content for their site at a rate likely comparable to purchasing the old, stale content from their blog.
5. Confusion: Licensing content is confusing to start with and the injection of a middle man, generally, does not help. It introduces a third party and, depending on the system, can make things much worse in this area.

The result of this is that the vast majority of blog content licensing services are destined to fail and it would seem that the industry is largely doomed before it begins.

However, there are ways companies an exploit this and turn what appears to the ultimate buyer’s market into a place where serious money can be made.

Gold from a Coal Mine

It is clear that profiting from blog licensing is going to require more than just having bloggers put a badge on their site and raking in the profits.

If a company is going to stay alive in the blog licensing field, they need to look at other options.

1. Be a Non-Profit: The first idea is to simply not worry about profit at all, be like Creative Commons and just offer tools and resources to help bloggers, as well as other Webmasters, and rely on donations and good will. Though CC seems to have a lock on this market, there may be room for other players if they can bring something new to the market.
2. Perform Quality Control: Blog Burst has remained successful in large part due to its quality control. Most blogs are not accepted into the service and this keeps the non-selling membership to a minimum.
3. Sell the Blogger: Rather than trying to sell the actual blog content, consider selling the blogger and making him or her available for custom writing jobs. In short, don’t be an agent for the words, be an agent for the person.
4. Offer an Additional Service: Registered Commons, My Free Copyright and Numly all offer licensing assistances as part of their service but primarily focus on being non-repudiation services. This keeps them from relying on the licensing element as a business model.
5. Profit from the Bloggers: Since bloggers will inevitably outnumber buyers, profiting from them makes sense. This can be done either through ad revenue or, if you can justify it, a fee for your services.
6. Premium Content: One can also skip the issue of trying to sell recycled content and focus on selling “premium” content by bloggers, something that Associated Content and Yepic both attempt to do.

The key is to not rely on the sale of regular blog content as your business model. Though many bloggers produce great work well worth the price they request for licensing it, the nature of blog content limits how much others will pay for it and how often they will buy.

Optimism. Or Something Like It

This is not to say that I am completely gloomy about the future of blog content licensing, just that I think the traditional business model of making money by selling already-available content is not likely to thrive, even though licensing companies can exploit the “long tail” and offer a wide variety of information to buyers.

Still, there are several blog licensing companies that I am optimistic about. Companies that have either proved themselves already or are exploring promising new models.

1. BlogBurst: Controversial it may have been at times, there is little doubt that Blog Burst has been around longer than just about anyone in this field. Their tight quality controls and strong partnerships with mainstream media have kept them going even as others have struggled to gain traction.
2. iCopyright Creators: Though the Creators service is new, iCopyright is not. It is a well-established and trusted name in content licensing, used by outlets such as the Associated Press and Reuters. Combined with a business model that takes no revenue from actual licensing deals, it has promise to be a major player in the future, if it can gain traction.
3. Associated Content: Another industry stalwart, Associated Content has an effective rating system that works to perform some quality control and a business model that combines sales and advertising revenue. Also, it’s focus on premium, unique content seems to help it attract both visitors and customers.

While other companies will likely still be around in a few years, especially the non-profits and those primarily offering other services, these are the content salesmen right now that seem to have the best position and the brightest future.

Of course, on the Web, that can change in a moment’s notice.

Note: Mentioning a company in this list is not necessarily approval for their service or their policies, just an observation that they appear to be in a good position to be in business years down the road. See other articles on the site for my opinions about the companies.

Conclusions

I think the problem with content licensing can be summarized by taking a quick look at my user page on RightsAgent.

Though I added the button to my site shortly after publishing my first article about them back in January, this site has only received six “credits”.

Since my content is licensed under a Creative Commons BY-SA license, meaning there is no fee for commercial use, there is no charge for these credits. RightsAgent has been offered for the convinience of the licensor (to aid in proper attribution) and the mutual protection of the two of us.

So far, by my math, no one has taken advantage of it. All six credits were given to myself by me during testing. This is despite the fact that dozens of sites have reused content on PT, with my blessing.

Though many may consider RightsAgent superfluous on this site, it is worrisome that no one was at least curious about the functionality it can provide.

The simple truth is that almost no one wants to go through a third party to license blog content and, while the business model can work, it is going to require more than simply being a passive salesman. It is about brokering deals, controlling quality and forging relationships.

In short, these companies need to function less like Web 2.0 services and more like traditional agents. Sometimes there is no substitute for a large personal network or a handshake agreement.

If blog licensing companies wish to succeed, they need to learn how to combine the traditional license dealmaking with new technologies.

If they can do that, then I suspect there is nothing stopping one from making a decent living helping bloggers license their works.