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rfmcdonaldThere's something terrifically ironic about my reposting of large chunks of the article "Study reveals mass online news copying," written by Kenneth Li and Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson originally for the Financial Times, over here.
When I reproduce chunks of articles here, or elsewhere, I do so with the intent of sharing interestng content with my readers and encouraging them to go visit the original page that has the entire document. Yes, I can post summaries, like the one I just posted on the Financial Times's take on MySpace's disarray, but I find them bloodless. People need teasers.
I also add value to these articles when I link to them: I link to them, I select and post especially interesting content, sometimes I comment on them, sometimes I comment on them so much that my readers get a [BRIEF NOTE] or even a treasured [BLOG-LIKE POSTING] out of them. I copy and link because I want my readers to see something interesting, I copy and link because I want my readers to have suggestions on how this can be read and to be able in turn to make suggestions about how it could also be read. No copy and link, no ongoing dialogue, and--not incidentally--no people being referred to these news sites. That's not a desirable outcome for them, is it?
Any number of people have commented that the problems facing journalism in the Internet era is that every credible newspaper has to have online content and every newspaper online has to compete against each other, some doing better than others. The Guardian has done spectacularly well out of this, with content widely reproduced outside of the United Kingdom, others lke perhaps the New York Times less so, still others rather worse. Simply put, businesses offering similar services are going to have to compete against each other, the weak perishing in true Darwinian fashion.
Who will survive? There will be the newspapers which survived, like the Guardian; there will the newspapers with established reputations and strong metropolitan support, like (I hope) the Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star; there will be the online news services associated with a broadcaster of one kind or another, like the CBC's site; there will be the newspapers catering to particular demographics, whether ideological or interest-based; there will be the locals, letting people know what's going on in their city, neighbourhood, on their street.
That's it.
Thoughts? I may have forgotten to add one or two categories of newspapers likely to survive, if so please note these in the comments.
A month-long study of how 101,000 articles published by 157 newspapers proliferated around the Internet found that more than 75,000 sites reused 112,000 almost exact copies without authorisation. A further 520,000 articles were reprinted in part.
The study, conducted by Attributor, a content tracking business, will form a critical part of upcoming negotiations between the news industry and online advertising networks, which publishers want to use to claw back the ad revenues being made by unauthorised redistributors.
[. . .]
Although the Attributor and the Fair Syndication Consortium has not estimated what the unlicensed content in its latest study might be worth, an earlier study that it conducted with 25 of the largest US publishers in January estimated that they were missing out on a possible $250m in revenue.
The study’s findings indicate that publishers are likely to hold Google and Yahoo responsible for clamping down on the unauthorised use of their content.
They are also set to push the the search groups to divert some of the revenue that would have gone to sites using newspaper content without permission back to publishers.
The study found Google accounted for 53 per cent of the advertising being run alongside unlicensed stories, and Yahoo accounted for a further 19 per cent. Bloggers, often the primary target of publishers’ anger about how their stories are disseminated online, accounted for less than 10 per cent of the unauthorised reuse.
When I reproduce chunks of articles here, or elsewhere, I do so with the intent of sharing interestng content with my readers and encouraging them to go visit the original page that has the entire document. Yes, I can post summaries, like the one I just posted on the Financial Times's take on MySpace's disarray, but I find them bloodless. People need teasers.
I also add value to these articles when I link to them: I link to them, I select and post especially interesting content, sometimes I comment on them, sometimes I comment on them so much that my readers get a [BRIEF NOTE] or even a treasured [BLOG-LIKE POSTING] out of them. I copy and link because I want my readers to see something interesting, I copy and link because I want my readers to have suggestions on how this can be read and to be able in turn to make suggestions about how it could also be read. No copy and link, no ongoing dialogue, and--not incidentally--no people being referred to these news sites. That's not a desirable outcome for them, is it?
Jim Pitkow, chief executive of Attributor, told the Financial Times that under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, ad networks were obliged to respond if publishers notified them that their ads were running alongside unlicensed content. Instead of telling ad networks to see that the content is taken down, however, the consortium wants a share of the revenues from advertising that is run alongside it.
“Ad networks [asked us to] prove to us that publishers care and prove to us this is a large enough issue for us to pay attention,” he said. “I think this data will be used to make a lot of cases.”
“You’ll start to see folks taking action around this in 2010,” he added, saying that the first two quarters of the year would be when “the rubber will really hit the road”.
Any number of people have commented that the problems facing journalism in the Internet era is that every credible newspaper has to have online content and every newspaper online has to compete against each other, some doing better than others. The Guardian has done spectacularly well out of this, with content widely reproduced outside of the United Kingdom, others lke perhaps the New York Times less so, still others rather worse. Simply put, businesses offering similar services are going to have to compete against each other, the weak perishing in true Darwinian fashion.
Who will survive? There will be the newspapers which survived, like the Guardian; there will the newspapers with established reputations and strong metropolitan support, like (I hope) the Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star; there will be the online news services associated with a broadcaster of one kind or another, like the CBC's site; there will be the newspapers catering to particular demographics, whether ideological or interest-based; there will be the locals, letting people know what's going on in their city, neighbourhood, on their street.
That's it.
Thoughts? I may have forgotten to add one or two categories of newspapers likely to survive, if so please note these in the comments.
