At least SOMEONE might be reading it!
"Publishers See a Way to Track Their Content Across the Net" by RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA
Copyrighted work like a news article or a picture can hop between Web sites as easily as a cut-and-paste command. But more than ever, as that material finds new audiences, the original sources might not get the direct financial benefit — in fact, they might have little idea where their work has spread.
A young company called Attributor says it has an answer, and a number of big publishers of copyrighted material say Attributor just might be right.
The company has developed software that identifies an electronic “fingerprint” for a particular piece of material — an article, a picture, a video. Then it hunts down any place across the Web where a significant chunk of that work has been copied, with or without permission.
Talk about taking spying to new levels!
When the use is unauthorized, Attributor’s software can automatically send a message to the site’s operators, demanding a link back to the original publisher’s site, a share of revenue from any ads on the page, or a halt to the copying.
Oh, wait a minute. Publishers See a Way to Track Their Content Across the Net
Ya frikkin' happy now, assholes!?
The Associated Press and Reuters, each of which publishes thousands of pieces of material each day, are among the company’s clients, and a number of large magazines and newspapers have been in talks with Attributor. Executives at both wire services said they were still adapting the software to their needs and deciding how to respond to its findings, but they do not doubt it will have some long-term value.
Srinandan R. Kasi, vice president and general counsel for The Associated Press, which has used the software for several months:
“For the first time, we now have a consistent way of getting this data and knowing what actually happens to our product, rather just ad hoc reports.”
For newspapers and magazines, financial survival increasingly means raising traffic on their Web sites and revenue from online ads. Executives of some major publishers, who asked for anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss their talks with Attributor, said they were somewhat optimistic that such software can help.
Maybe if you told the truth you wouldn't have that problem!
A newspaper company executive said:
“There are probably thousands of examples every year where our stuff gets copied without authorization. The ad revenue they get from it might not be much, but if each of those just gives a link back to our original, that could be a significant amount of traffic.”
So what? I ignore ads.
And if you don't want the work or the by-line published without the link, fine, you can keep your shit reports!
I'm tired of wasting the time manually-linking the shit!
Attributor, based in the San Francisco area, was founded last year by Jim Brock and Jim Pitkow, veteran executives of technology companies. Mr. Brock, the chief executive officer, was a senior vice president at Yahoo. Mr. Pitkow, the chief technology officer, has a doctorate in computer science and has headed other technology companies.
The problem can be seen in the enormous attention given to a series of articles on Dick Cheney published in The Washington Post last June. One passage in the first article drew particular attention, revealing details like the unofficial stamp used by Mr. Cheney to label documents as secret, and the man-size safe he used to keep office papers.
But a lot of the people who read that passage had no easy way of knowing that it came from The Post, or of finding its source. A recent Google search found more than 80 blogs and political Web sites that lifted a few hundred words of the article or more, verbatim or nearly so.
It's called the free flow of information, a-holes!
If I wrote a book and footnoted items, you wouldn't have a problem with that!
Some attributed the material to The Post, but offered no link to the original article; others offered a link, but made no mention of The Post, and some had neither. And about half of those pages had ads on them.
I don't allow ads or commentaries. This is a news site.
The appeal for wire services is different. The Associated Press and Reuters said searching for use without permission may lead to potential sales.
Mr. Kasi: “What you find is that the user can become a licensee.”
I ALREADY AM!!!! I ALREADY PAID my $2 to buy the shitrags, dammit!!!!!!!
This is about shutting down bloggers, isn't it?
Reuters began using Attributor last month, and Chris Ahearn, president of Reuters Media, said that first he wants to learn how his company’s thousands of customers are using the vast stream of information it sends their way.
Mr. Ahearn, both to drive traffic to the Reuters site and to turn cheaters into customers:
"[Finding unauthorized use] clearly is a big opportunity for us. Our attitude is there are enough lawyers in the world, so why don’t we turn this over to our sales people?”
If you guys had a good product, you wouldn't need to do that!
Meanwhile, the assholes are going to invade my space:
"Tracking of Web Use by Marketers Gains Favor" by LOUISE STORY
It seems that the Federal Trade Commission is not slowing down the online advertising party.
Just days after a commissioner at the agency expressed concern about consumer privacy on the Internet, two large social networking sites are showcasing new ways to use information about their members to deliver specialized advertisements.
Oh, I can't use the shit articles, but I can be barraged with "tele-marketers" all day because your software spies on me?
Pfffffffttttttt!?
MySpace will announce today that more than 50 large advertisers, including Ford and Taco Bell, are using its so-called HyperTargeting ad program, which scours user profiles for interests and then delivers related ads. And, within the next few days, Facebook is widely expected to announce a new advertising system that will be based on data from its members’ profiles.
Un-fucking-believable! You news elites stink like shit!
The MySpace announcement is unrelated to the recent F.T.C. hearings on online advertising — rather, it was timed to the start of Ad:Tech, a digital advertising conference in New York, according to Michael Barrett, chief revenue officer for Fox Interactive Media, the unit of the News Corporation that includes MySpace. MySpace is also announcing a self-service site where small and midsize advertisers can buy custom display ads on the site.
Privacy advocates said they were surprised how quickly online companies came back to the market promoting their targeting programs.
Kathryn Montgomery, a professor at American University and author of the book “Generation Digital: Politics, Commerce, and Childhood in the Age of the Internet.":
“Despite all of the assurances that the industry gave to regulators and the public, it sounds as if their business plans sort of fly in the face of the promises to operate without exploiting young people. If you are hanging out with your friends and talking about who you are, what rock stars you like, and so on, you don’t assume that someone is sitting there and taking down every word you’re saying and putting it into some kind algorithm.”
Hi! :-)
We've won, because you can destroy my blog, my body, and my books; however, you can never destroy ideas!
MySpace was notably absent from the panels at the F.T.C.’s forum on behavioral targeting held in Washington last week. Executives from Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, the AOL unit of Time Warner and Facebook discussed their privacy policies, but MySpace sent representatives onkly to watch the forum, not to speak. A spokeswoman from MySpace said the company would be active in discussions about privacy.
The forum was the agency’s first public workshop on online advertising in eight years, and officials from the agency expressed concern that marketers and Internet companies might be infringing on people’s privacy in some of the way they use online data to aim their ads.
Jon Leibowitz, an F.T.C. commissioner.:
“People should have dominion over their computers. The current ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ in online tracking and profiling has to end.”
Don't ask, don't tell?
Ya mean, your not there reading my stuff and charting my tastes, monitor?
:-(
