Company Will Track and "Fingerprint" Associated Press Content

This is great news for real webmasters--if it works

[weeks]

According to a report on Editor and Publisher, a firm call Attributor will track and 'Fingerprint' Associated Press reports "down to a level where it can be identified anywhere on the Web."

[editorandpublisher.com...]

"Our goal is to get a feeling for some of the useful ways to monitor content," said Srinandan Kasi, vice president, general counsel and secretary at the AP. "We are looking at it not just to protect our rights but to derive some intelligence."

Attributor CEO and co-founder Jim Brock calls the "DNA" of the material, which boils down to a specific paragraph or a few sentences. With that information, Attributor can watch where the content is going in turn giving publishers a map. Publishers can then determine where, how, and when the content is used.

[Syzygy]

So, effectively this is copyscape but with the added feature of something like a cloud view?

Syzygy

[weeks]

Yeah, I thought that similar technology out there as well. But, being deployed and enforced by AP is worth noting. This will build some case law on top of some procedures.

Perhaps one will be able to sign up for a service that would handle it all for you, up to suing. Newspapers would be interested, of course, but once some scale is achieved the service could be affordable for many putting content on the web.

AP will do a good job with this. They will take it very, very slow.

[eventus]

yes... this is very similar to the copyscape service and I do think that the major news orgs like AP, AHN, Reuters etc. will all use this or something like it.

The use of this will be almost entirely to enforce copyrights on the web. If you are violating copyrights of news agencies watchout!

[vincevincevince]

The only worrying this is that AP's own warning statement attempts to imply they have more rights over the content than they actually have. I just hope they don't go around trying to scare people into thinking they're in the wrong when they're not.