Support the Source: Creating a New Media Business Model and Keeping the Web Open
By Tom Foremski - June 22, 2008
Linking and quoting content from web sites is what makes the world wide web into a true web. It's a fantastic media technology that can publish content and distribute it to almost anywhere in the world in seconds.
Associated Press recently took steps to limit the web by preventing unlicensed sites from quoting from its news stories. This is a bad policy because it is restrictive and it lessens the value of the web, and in my view, it is uneccessary.
Fair use frustration . . .
AP's policy is born out of the general frustration felt by the media and other content creators when their content is used by others for profit or for publicity--and the content creator doesn't share in the value reaped by others.
Those that take large chunks of content from AP or from other sites under undefined fair use policies say that they are driving traffic to the source site. But anyone that has access to their server logs knows this is only slightly true. The problem is that only a small fraction of traffic goes to the source site. And only a small percentage of that traffic can be monetised by the source site.
So that means content creators, if they produce something of value that is widely quoted and distributed, are unable to benefit much from the value they create for others that use or reference that content.
Clearly, that's not fair use, because creating news content for example, is expensive. You need journalists, editors, pension plans, offices, administrators, and janitors... Google News and other news aggregators machines to harvest that content - that's a low cost of content--all harvested as "fair use."
Bloggers and others, do pretty much the same: they take and quote freely from content such as news stories and they benefit from that content--they create a personal brand and following that helps them in their day job-- they profit from it. But the content creators don't get to benefit from the value that is created by those that use or reference that content.
Meritorious support . . .
It doesn't have to be that way. And we don't have to lock up content and make the web less useful, as AP appears to be doing. There is potentially another way in which content can be created and distributed freely and which would support content creators to create more content.
My proposal is a voluntary system in which you quote freely from a site and you republish an "adtribution link" next to it that would help support the source site. An adtribution link would be a simple text link ad set by the source site. This would meritorious support because only good content gets quoted and the bad doesn't.
The adtribution link could be identified this way:
Support the source: Rave reviews find out why! - Order the The Amazon Kindle Electronic Book Reader!
The "Support the source" identifies the adtribution link that could be in green to signify its link to money.
If you quote from a page with an adtribution link you would copy and paste the entire link, including "Support the source" which identifies and links to the source site. It shows that you are respectful of the work of others and it also allows you to support your favorite sites without it costing you anything.
In this way good content gets the distribution it deserves, and so does the adtribution link that helps support that content.
It is a win-win situation. It doesn't cost anything to "support the source." And it would help great content producers create more great content -- creating a virtuous circle.
Would you support the source? How often do you get the chance to be among the first :-)
- - -
[Please copy and paste the following link:]
Support the source: Rave reviews find out why! - Order the The Amazon Kindle Electronic Book Reader!
June 22, 2008 | Permalink | Comment | Category: Media Watch | Subscribe to SVW
- Top Stories:
- Socialbrite: Helping Non-Profits Master Social Tools For Social Change
- The Pressure Is On When Every Company Is Now A Media Company...
- Vinod Khosla: How To Succeed In Silicon Valley By Bumbling And Failing...
- Saturday Post: If You Are In The Path Of A Disruptive Technology You Are Toast - Goodbye Newspaper Companies
- SDForum Garden Party Notes: Vinod Khosla is the Antichrist; Jim Clark has a size problem; Silicon Valley Trophies - Hot women and large yachts...
- Traveling Geeks Trip Next Week ... Join Us In London!
- Bitten and Smitten: Why Journalism Is Like Falling For The Wrong Person
- Year One: The Lessons Of The Intel Insider Media Advisory Program
- UberCEO Survey: CEOs Of Fortune 100 Snub Social Media - None Blog, Only 2 Twitter
- From Big Blue To Big Brown - IBM Launches Green Services In Smart Sewage And Beyond
- Keeping It Real: PR's Real-Time Web Challenge
- A Saturday Post: The Internet Devalues Everything It Touches, Anything That Can Be Digitized
Comments (7)
Tom,
Dare I ask...could this be solved by technology? Could media companies, including yourself or anyone, subscribe to a service that builds technology beneath each story, each blog post that would ping the original source every time it was clicked, even when clicked well beyond the original distribution point/Web site?
If media companies are still getting paid for clicks, this would seem to deliver what they're missing, and help them collect clicks from every story that is republished in the blogospher.
With more big media sites allowing commenting, voting and other ways for people to engage, I'm hoping they start getting paid more for actual engagement than shear click/visits.
Back to "Support the source." I remember you tried something similar a while back. I believe I tested it in a post on my personal blog. Back then I thought it'd work fine. But I didn't continue the good behavior. I don't want to do the extra work every time I write a post adding my view/context around someone else's news story or blog. But that said, you're calling for a behavioral change. I can and will change, but maybe some kind of economic reason will be required for it to really become the norm.
Posted: June 23, 2008 1:05 AM
I understand why it's important to refer people back to the original source. But I'm not sure I agree that everyone needs to be "paid" for it. The whole concept of "fair use" was written into the copyright law so that people wouldn't have to pay royalties for quoting an article or a source.
So if we just alter the link to read "Visit the Source" instead of "Support" maybe that gets rid of the idea (even if there is no transaction) that someone is going to get paid (or have to pay) just for clicking a link.
Also, bloggers and others who link to an original source are doing the source a great service just by getting their name out there, by publicizing the issue. Isn't that payment in a way?
Posted: June 23, 2008 8:14 AM
It's important to think about alternatives to locking down content.
The upside: as described, adtribution would work in RSS feeds and tools for managing shared content, such as FriendFeed. Also, it could be tacked onto affiliate re-publisher programs, building up "revards" of some sort for the re-publishers who play nicely.
The downside: many content scrapers and aggregators would be tempted use adtribution to double-link to their own sites and name themselves as "source" -- which makes sense in a twisted way, when you look at content in terms of feeds rather than being displayed web pages.
Publishers are going to resolve this situation by shifting their perspective -- recognizing online republishers as affiliates/channels requiring rewards of some sort.
Posted: June 23, 2008 10:58 AM
Tom,
I think that to be truly objective we should be tackling the sticky problem of copyright law and the legal concept of Fair Use, which was conceived at a point in time where publishing something entailed something more involved that copy/paste and hitting a post button.
I don't think the adtribution concept works though, but only because displaying an ad has so little economic value to publishers. But I think display ads in general are a declining returns business. If you could contextualize an ad based on the content of the attributed text, then that could be interesting.
Posted: June 23, 2008 11:00 AM
Thanks for your comments...
All very good points. I think the larger issue is that there is no decent way for a media company to make money with online advertising. Media companies get paid either for pageviews, clicks on ads, or for performance: if someone actually buys something and pays for it. Right now there is little economic value in these types of payments. That's why conferences are becoming the way to subsidize media companies.
Yes, fair use needs to be better defined. And yes, there are many ways scammers and spammers take advantage of media companies. Could technology help sort out a better business model? Yes, it could but only within an acceptable infrastructure.
Links back to the source site are respectful but they don't pay any bills.
I'm afraid that the future is going to be a largely closed web and a web where the usefull information is going to be expensive and the preserve of the rich... and it will benefit the rich.
Posted: June 23, 2008 1:51 PM
Fair Use Has been defined:
"Section 107 contains a list of the various purposes for which the reproduction of a particular work may be considered “fair,” such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research."
The definition is a percentage and usage problem,and not an economic issue.
Your argument that because 'news' costs money that fair use does not apply is the AP argument.
This is a curious argument since the AP is owned by its members to share and lower the 'cost' of news.
The most interesting about the AP/Drudge Retort copyfight is that the quotations did not come from the AP, but were from other sources, except by byline, (which begs the question of whether the source that alleged infringement was a complete and accurate AP story or if it had been edited for space and to run in the time allotted.)
By putting a dollar amount on news, this moves the perception of bias by advertising dollars into a much more prominent position than it already has. In addition to the dollars for press problem, there is the issue of what the news has become. Is it a series of checks and balances in a democratic society, to inform the people whom it serves, or is it a rapidly dwindling space for advertising dollars?
Using other peoples money to finance things is as old as time, but is it really how we want to have news delivered?
Posted: June 26, 2008 11:37 AM
I think the best way to work this in would be through a tool in Scribefire, Ecto and Livewriter which added it in automatically for text you quote.
I think Triggit could do this very easily right now on top of their existing tech...
Posted: June 26, 2008 11:59 AM