Start-up aims to make plagiarism profitable

by Elizabeth Clifford-Marsh, revolutionmagazine.com 27-Jul-09, 11:36

LONDON - Publishers including The New York Times and Reuters have backed Californian start-up company Attributor, that aims to offers newspaper sites a way to share in ad revenue with websites that copy their content.

Attributor's model is based on scanning web pages and identifying articles produced by participating publishers. It will then inform the ad network that sells inventory on the website that it must pass on a share of the revenue to the copyright holder.

However, in order to succeed it needs to work in partnership with ad networks run by Google and Yahoo!, which have been reluctant to back the venture. Attributor aims to take a cut of the ad money to run its service.

Attributor has the backing of The New York Times Company, Hearst, Reuters, Conde Nast and the Washington Post Company, which will use the firm's data to monitor the use of their content across the web. They have yet to sign up to a revenue sharing deal.

Last week The Associated Press said it would put warnings against copyright violation on its articles and digitally track illegitimate uses, but did not specify how it would combat the practise.