For some time now the Associated Press — a fantastic news service that, despite its excellence, once distributed my reporting — has been using a service by Silicon Valley-based Attributor to track the distribution of their articles online. Attributor isn't an access-blocking technology. Instead, it lets AP know very quickly how their output is being used, be it on a licensed newspaper or TV site, a blog, or an unlicensed aggregator. The technology itself is neutral; the AP — whose newspaper owners are represented by Copyright Alliance member the Newspaper Association of America — can choose how to respond to the information the technology provides it.

One has to assume that the vast amount of data Attributor — a Copyright Aliance member — provided to AP was useful as it formulated an approach to online licensing. AP has now announced that approach. Working with a company called iCopyright — not yet a Copyright Alliance member — AP has launched an innovative approach to licensing AP stories, whether your organization is large or small:

AP will display iCopyright links at the top and bottom of every AP-hosted
story so users can easily use, share and license content instantly. AP will
encourage subscribers to add the iCopyright tags to the AP stories they
publish on their own websites. Publishers that deploy iCopyright tags earn
revenue from reuse licenses while preserving copyrights and brand
awareness.

Will this eliminate infringement? No. But those who insist any solution must be 100% foolproof before it is implemented are really saying they want nothing that requires the user of a copyrighted work to do anything. Would they insist that no one receive chemotherapy until it is advanced enough to eradicate 100% of cancer incidences? I doubt it.

So this isn't the silver bullet, but we all know that doesn't exist. Attributor lets AP know where the infringement is. iCopyright gives the AP a way to reduce that infringement, in part by getting the well-intentioned to license because it is easy and provides incentives. These are positive steps, and worth noting. 

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 17th, 2008 at 11:05 am by Patrick Ross and is filed under drm, licensing, market forces. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.