back to article Google should punt content thief ad payments to rights owners

A content-tracking software company wants the internet's biggest advertising networks to siphon money from advertising on copyright-infringing websites and divert it to the material's original owners. No major ad network has signed up yet. Attribute is forming the Fair Syndication Network, a grouping of publishers who will use …

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  1. A J Stiles
    Stop

    Slight Flaw

    There's a slight flaw in that plan.

    Copyright-infringing sites may not be generating any advertising revenue; either deliberately because their owners don't include adverts, or accidentally because the people who visit those kinds of sites use aggressive advert-blocking techniques.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Interesting....

    Could this mean diverting the advertising on uTube showing music vids to the artist. How will the MAFIAA get their 95% cut?

  3. Pierre
    Thumb Down

    Major flaws. Actually the whole system *is* a huge scam.

    So how's that supposed to work then? I should register my content and get the revenue from people reusing it? What if the "thief" reused content from several sources -some of them possibly unregistered-? Does the whole revenue go in MY pocket, making ME the thief? What if a bunch of fast, money-hungry wankers register all possible content before I have the chance to do so? Do MY revenue goes to THEM then? What part of the "redirected" revenue goes to the useless leeches implementing the crappy system?

    Good grief, this system is even worst than the US patents (and that's saying something).

    Leeching: the safe way to make money in tough times.

    Nice to see El Reg advertising shameless scams. Not.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    It won't work anyway

    There is another big flaw in the plan.

    Imagine if I am illegally hosting MP3s.

    All I need to do is save them as another format and re-MP3 them or add a tiny fraction of silence to the start of the track. Then it's much harder to identify, maybe impossible.

    It might work for text but frankly, not many people pirate text compared to the number that copy DVDs CDs and games.

    DVDs and game data can be obfuscated in similar ways (adding it to an encrypted rar archive for example)

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    detecting fair use - look no quotes

    <quote>would ignore excerpts within quotation marks to try to take account of 'fair use' exceptions.</quote>

    Preposterous.

  6. Conrad Longmore
    Stop

    What a load of..

    What a load of b*llocks.

    Ad networks should simply terminate and ban persistent copyright violators, not all networks make it easy to file a complaint or even seem to care. Who cares about redistributing the money through some half-baked scheme? The main thing is to stop it happening in a timely manner in the first place.

  7. Heff

    bad idea.

    not a small jump to ask that microsoft gets revenue from 'misleading' PC vs Mac Ads, and then before you know where you are, you've got Intel demanding Motorola Ad money because of a patent issue.

  8. system

    Legal?

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tortious_interference

    Unless the contract between the advertisers and the host includes clauses about copyright infringing material, they (Attribute) will be convincing the advertisers to break their contract and acting in an illegal manner themselves.

    Further, they already mentioned that they believe the DMCA creates liability for the advertisers once they are informed of infringing material. How do they become non-liable by continuing to pay the infringer as well as the artists? The content doesn't suddenly become legal because google throws a few pennies of ad revenue to the artists, and if they stop paying the infringer the ads will simply be pulled from the site.

  9. Dan

    Reuters?

    Once a company signs up to this service, it becomes licensed use and not stealing. Better to file suit against the infringers, then get the banking details from the ad networks for to seize their valuable assets.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    T&Cs

    So if I don't agree to the terms of use of some particular content, rather than have me stop using it, I am now encouraged to use it at will, assume that I will receivce revenue from it, and redistribute some of that to the content owner? Doesn't that a) assume that I'm taking any revenue from the content and b) allow me to set whatever terms I feel like, undermining the original owner's terms?

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    Wrong implementation, but nice idea

    I can sympathize with what they're trying to do. I've had a great deal of my own writings--most of which are published under a Creative Commons attribute-style license--stolen and posted on other Web sites, sometimes pay-for access sites and sometimes sites with Google ads, without attribution.

    It boggles my mind, really, that folks will steal work *even if they are free to use it simply by including an attribution*.

    Much as I am no fan of the DMCA, poorly-written and overbroad embuggerance that it is, I have had to use it on many occasions (four times in the last month alone!) when people rip off huge tracts of my Web site wholesale and re-post it on their own sites without attribution, then refuse to attribute it when I contact them. Hell, I've had folks take articles I've written and stick their own names and copyright notices on them!

    So I can see the need, and I think the folks who propose this system are trying (for the most part, anyway) to do the right thing. I just think the system they propose suffers from the one, admittedly trivial, little tiny flaw of being completely unworkable.

  12. Chris C

    How to steal money

    It's funny that this should appear today, as I was just telling a friend over dinner last night that I could be much more successful if I was willing to be dishonest and willing to lie to people in order to get more business. So how would this system know who the real copyright holders are -- trust those people/companies claiming to hold the rights, or verified registrations from the various nations' copyright offices? How would the system reasonably detect fair-use (simply searching for text within quotes is laughable in its absurdity)? How would the system detect when something is used for other legal reasons (news reporting, education, etc)?

    Simply put, there's a reason that copyright infringement cases have to go to court, either civil court for small-scale or criminal court for large-scale. The reason is that a human must review the evidence and decide whether the uses were criminal or not according to the law. There's literally no way an automated computer program could make such a decision. What this company is trying to do is remove the courts from the equation so that the alleged rights holders are the complainant, judge, and jury, and the ad networks are the enforcers (much the same as the RIAA/MPAA wants to do with ISPs and the auto-Internet-cutoff scheme).

    Life would be so much simpler if it weren't for those pesky laws and those pesky courts getting in the way.

  13. Andraž Levstik

    Somewhat interesting

    What I want though is an opt-in scheme to be able to pay for the content I consume using any means I damn well please. I would even voluntarily report what content I consume so that the right content owners would get reimbursed.

    I'd like a flat rate of 10-20eur/month for each group of audio, visual and text works. I guess something similar for software would be added as well.

    FFS give me a means to pay easily and consider content to be a flatrate subscription in the digital age and you'll start making money. But make sure you allow the consumer to choose their method of getting it NOT provide your own half baked apps to do it.

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