Donna Bogatin of ZDNet has written two posts about Attributor, the VC backed start-up seeking to help online publishers profit from the widespread repurposing of their orginal content.
Attributor’s technology analyzes publishers’ original content published to the Web—text, images, audio, video—with the goal of providing “visibility” as to how it is subsequently re-used by third-parties online.
Today, Attributor announced its first client—Associated Press. Srinandan Kasi, the news cooperative’s general counsel said, “What we are trying to say is that if someone wants to use our news, they have to pay for it.”
“It’s the start of a movement,” Jim Brock, Attributor’s CEO enthused. A real “Claim Your Content” movement!
I can certainly understand Brock’s enthusiasm. For old school media companies want desperately to put the genie back in the bottle, and they’ll no doubt pay his firm big money to do it. But will it work? I don’t know. How well has the sue every teenager in sight strategy worked for the recording industry?
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Hopefully, the recording industry example will dissuade media companies from trying a “sue first, ask questions later” approach. I’m sure there will be a few that toe-dip with this strategy, but the out-cry will be loud.
While Attributor does allow companies to automate the DMCA process, it appears their focus is on new revenue opportunities. That said, I bet that a lot of media companies are pretty enthused to have a tool to help them level the playing field with the search engines.