An online copyright monitoring company is encouraging publishers to fight piracy and increase ad revenue by seeking syndication deals with violators, citing a new report that readership of articles on unauthorized websites is about one and half times larger than the original source.
Attributor, a copyright monitoring company which launched in 2007 and whose clients include the Associated Press, Reuters, The Financial Times and CondeNet, is also likely hoping to cash in on the bad news by offering up its services. It suggests that one solution to the problem would be for publishers to find a way to sell ads alongside the pirated content, in addition to requesting source links or removal of the content.
The study looked at 30 billion pages that hosted unauthorized content in September from more than 100 major Web sites, none of which were current customers. It estimates (based on a generous $1 per 1000 page view model) that 42 percent of publishers are missing $50,000 in annual ad revenue; 33 percent are missing up to $250,000 in ad revenue; and 25 percent are missing more than $250,000 in annual ad revenue from off-site content.
A similar approach in the video world is being conducted through a partnership between MySpace and Viacom, where pirated videos on the social network are identified with the option of removing them or integrating ads. And YouTube, which recently partnered with MGM to host some full length movies and TV shows, is promising the same method for the studio to profit from piracy using a new technology called VideoID.
Arr! Publishers Losing Money on 'Pirated' Stories [AP]
Photo: Flickr/bortescristian
See Also:
