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.
When the use is unauthorized, Attributors software can automatically send a message to the sites operators, demanding a link back to the original publishers site, a share of revenue from any ads on the page, or a halt to the copying.
The Associated Press and Reuters, each of which publishes thousands of pieces of material each day, are among the companys 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.
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, said Srinandan R. Kasi, vice president and general counsel for The Associated Press, which has used the software for several months.
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.
There are probably thousands of examples every year where our stuff gets copied without authorization, a newspaper company executive said. 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.
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.
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.
The appeal for wire services is different. The Associated Press and Reuters said searching for use without permission may lead to potential sales. What you find is that the user can become a licensee, said Mr. Kasi.
Reuters began using Attributor last month, and Chris Ahearn, president of Reuters Media, said that first he wants to learn how his companys thousands of customers are using the vast stream of information it sends their way.
But finding unauthorized use clearly is a big opportunity for us, Mr. Ahearn said, both to drive traffic to the Reuters site and to turn cheaters into customers. He added, Our attitude is there are enough lawyers in the world, so why dont we turn this over to our sales people?
#1
Mods: Fark.com uses a tag in their submissions, which is a drop down menu with their most common link sources, and a fill in box for others. This would probably be easy to add to, say, the blue bar at the top of submissions. Something like:
2007-11-05 International-UN-NGOs Washington Post
That might be more like a byline giving credit, at least enough so they wouldn't get huffy about it.
The distributor of a new translation of the Koran has been arrested after complaints from religious scholars that the new edition was un-Islamic. Former journalist Ghows Zalmay is also the spokesman for Afghanistan's attorney general. He was arrested on the border on Sunday while trying to flee into Pakistan.
Demonstrators protested in two Afghan provinces against the new translation of the Koran into Dari, one of Afghanistan's two official languages.
Religious scholars are outraged at the new edition of the Muslim holy book. They say that it is un-Islamic, that it misinterprets verses about alcohol, begging, homosexuality and adultery. They also complain that it does not contain the original version in Arabic as a parallel text for comparison.
Both houses of the Afghan parliament have held emergency debates. Senators have called for Mr Zalmay and the translator, himself a mullah, to be punished. One said Mr Zalmay was "worse than Salman Rushdie", whose book, The Satanic Verses, caused widespread outrage in the Islamic world. Another said Mr Zalmay was under the protection of a foreign security company.
In the northern city of Taloqan 1,500 university students took to the streets in protest, while in the south-east province of Nimruz 1,000 local people, including several mullahs, took part in a demonstration.
The Afghan constitution enshrines freedom of expression, but for many Afghans that freedom has clear limits and they do not include making interpretive translations of the Koran.
#2
It would be nice to know the specifics of what it supposedly misinterprets. From the article one could infer that the new translation isn't strict enough on homosexuals, etc. and that would be consistent with the fact that the 'former journalist' probably knows that westerners would wince at an honest translation
Britain's health secretary complained on Thursday about an advertisement run by Rudy Giuliani, saying the U.S. Republican presidential candidate had maligned Britain's health care system with bad statistics. In the radio ad, Giuliani, who has suffered prostate cancer, said the U.S. survival rate for the disease was 82 percent, but the survival rate in Britain was just 44 percent "under socialized medicine".
Britain's Health Secretary Alan Johnson said Giuliani's figures were wrong and the survival rate under Britain's National Health Service was in fact much higher. "The British NHS should not become a political football in American presidential politics," Johnson told The Times newspaper. "Our rate of prostate cancer survival is actually much higher than has been claimed. The latest data show a survival rate of over 70 percent and rising."
A health department spokesman said the latest figures from Britain's Office of National Statistics showed a five-year survival rate of 74.4 percent for prostate cancer.
Giuliani spokeswoman Maria Comella has said the former New York mayor got his figures from a magazine article and used it at a campaign stop, which was recorded and used in the advertisement.
Cancer survival rate statistics depend on the number of cancers that are detected and when they are reported, and therefore may not necessarily reflect how well a health care system performs at preventing cancer deaths overall. The Times said roughly the same proportion of men — 25 out of 100,000 — die of prostate cancer in the United States and Britain each year.
#1
This was noted on Hot Air the other day. Article's here.
Short version: while the mortality rates for prostate cancer are similar between the US and Britain, the mortality rates for men diagnosed with prostate cancer are much higher in the US. That is, once they realize you have prostate cancer, your odds of surviving are better in the US (80% vs 43%, if I understand their figures correctly).
According to that article, only 40% of cancer patients in Britain see an oncologist, which sounds mind-boggling. Perhaps Dr. Steve can clarify.
#5
Cancer survival rate statistics depend on the number of cancers that are detected and when they are reported, and therefore may not necessarily reflect how well a health care system performs at preventing cancer deaths overall.
Unless the health care system might also be thought to have a role in detecting and reporting cancers. Which it does.
#7
Did Rudi mention if this was after 9/11, and the devastation it brought, while he was leading the emergency response with his brilliant leadership skills, or after 9/11 where America is now forced to deal with the growing influence of Islamicfascism, because the UK and Europe were more interested in expanding socialized medicine?
Posted by: Joe Biden ||
11/05/2007 12:08 Comments ||
Top||
#1
RUSSIA > Putin [paraph]recently claimed that certain elements desire for Russia to be divided/partitioned, inorder to control Russ resources; while others just want to rule the world = all of mankind. VEILED REFERENCE TO USA.
SPARTANBURG, South Carolina (CNN) At a campaign event Saturday, Sen. Barack Obama called his distant cousin, Vice President Dick Cheney, "a crazy uncle in the attic."
Obama was referencing the recent revelation by the Vice President's wife, Lynne Cheney, that he and the Vice President are distantly related.
"For the first time in a long time, the name George Bush will not appear on the ballot," he told the crowd of about 500 people at Converse College in Spartanburg.
"The name Dick Cheney, my cousin, will not appear on the ballot," Obama said. "We had been trying to hide that cousin thing for a long time. Everybody's got a black sheep in the family. A crazy uncle in the attic."
Sheltering pigs out of official compulsion has landed a Bihar veterinary official in trouble. Even his family has turned hostile to him and his community has ostracised him.
Dr Alam Azad, in his late 50s and a senior veterinary officer in Khshanganj district about 350 km from Patna, has been taking care of over 100 pigs that were confiscated while they were being smuggled into Nepal on September 16.
Azad, who has been planning to go on the Haj pilgrimage, is now having sleepless nights as fellow Muslims have objected to the veteirnarian's plans to go to Mecca. "I was ostracised by fellow Muslims and my own family has turned hostile for sheltering the pigs against the tenets of Islam," Alam said. The pig is considered impure (napak.)
"I had no option but to keep them safe and alive to produce them in the court," Dr Azad, who has been spending Rs 500 daily on animal feed and employees who take care of them, said.
Dr Azad said he has spent over Rs 32,000 from his pocket for rearing the confiscated animals. "I was not paid a single rupee by the district administration," Dr Azad, who has been keeping the pigs outside his official residence in a bamboo enclosure for over 45 days to produce them in court as "evidence" told rediff.com over telephone.
Take a few photos and turn them into bacon, doc.
According to official sources, acting on a tip off that the animals were being tortured by the smugglers, the animal husbandry officer had raided Belwa village in Kishanganj town near the Nepal border. The pigs were confiscated under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act. The police accompanying the official also arrested two alleged smugglers.
Sources in Kishanganj district administration said the arrested smugglers, with the confiscated pigs, were brought to town police station but the police refused to keep them on the grounds of lack of shelter facility. Local cowshed owners also refused to keep them fearing that pigs would infect the cows and dirty the place.
Thus, the responsibility fell on Dr Azad. "Now, I am not sure if I will be able to leave for Jeddah between November 11 and 25 to go on Haj pilgrimage."
Now, Dr Azad's hopes to get rid of the pigs lie with the district officials who had promised to help him by arranging another shelter. "I was singled out and ostracised for giving shelter to pigs out of official compulsion, I tried to convince them but failed, no one is ready to understand my plight," Dr Azad said. "But how can I free them, these pigs are evidence against the arrested smugglers, It is my official duty to keep them," Alam said.
Posted by: john frum ||
11/05/2007 10:44 ||
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#1
"But how can I free them, these pigs are evidence against the arrested smugglers, It is my official duty to keep them," Alam said.
"Besides, no matter what they say, these BLTs are delicious!"
#2
maybe this should be our new secret weapon: drop planeloads of weiner pigs into the talibunnie strongholds and while they are chasing them, open fire.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Britain's health secretary complained on Thursday about an advertisement run by Rudy Giuliani, saying the U.S. Republican presidential candidate had maligned Britain's health care system with bad statistics. In the radio ad, Giuliani, who has suffered prostate cancer, said the U.S. survival rate for the disease was 82 percent, but the survival rate in Britain was just 44 percent "under socialized medicine".
Sheltering pigs out of official compulsion has landed a Bihar veterinary official in trouble. Even his family has turned hostile to him and his community has ostracised him.
