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The Case for iCopyright's Ad-Supported "Free Uses"
By MIKE O'DONNELL, Founder & CEO, iCopyright
March 15, 2006
Content wants to be free. More specifically, users want content to be free. The web site of any news and information publisher will likely include at least two links at the top of every article published there. I am referring, of course, to the ubiquitous "Printer Friendly Version" and "Email a Friend" links. These links have been with us since the early days of the web. They are part of the online culture. Millions of people use these links every day to share content and to make copies for future reference.
Scroll to the bottom of many of these same pages and you are likely to find another common link - the iCopyright link. A lot less people use this link. Those that do are directed to an automated licensing system that invites them to buy reprints, digital licenses, and to request other types of copyright permissions. Publishers will sometimes put a "reprint" link at the top of the article, alongside the free use links. The challenge, of course, is this: "Why would users choose the copyright or reprint links instead of the free use links?" Users have to pay for reprints, digital licenses and other copyright permissions - and they often have to wait days or weeks to get the content. They don't have to pay to use the email and print links, plus they get the content immediately. It is no small wonder why users are confused about copyright...about what they can and can not do with the publisher's content.
Balancing Free Uses and Paid Uses
I have spent the last eight years working with rights and permissions professionals. They are the unsung heroes of the news and information-publishing world. They have the audacity to believe that the content their companies publish has value and that users should not be given free rein to copy and distribute anyway they please. They believe in copyright. And although they would never say it publicly, the free use links are the bane of their existence. "Free uses don't waive our copyrights in the content," one licensing manager told me, "but they are implied licenses. Users think we are giving them liberty to copy and distribute the content to whomever they want. This is especially true if those users are also our advertisers. Essentially, we give them a license to steal our content."
I am a big believer in fair use, or more specifically, free use. I support Creative Commons and other initiatives that communicate the owner's rights, but allow people to use the content for free. The Internet and digital devices that deliver content would be far less powerful if one could not do anything with the content except read it.
Given these competing interests, what is the happy balance between allowing users to freely use and pass-along content, without weakening copyright and cannibalizing reprint sales? How can publishers monetize the email-a-friend and printer-friendly version features? I believe the solution is Advertiser-Supported Free Uses - free copyright permissions. The publisher's brand and copyright notice ride along with the content. So do keyword, contextual, and behavioral ads that generate new revenue for the publisher. The free use, reprint and copyright links should also be one in the same. These links should appear at the top and bottom of each article and they should ride along with the article no matter where users send it. The links support each other by providing integrated cross-sell and upsell between free uses, reprints, and fee-based licenses. These integrated links function as a persistent copyright notice to provide users with a coherent and consistent message about the value of the content and the publisher's rights in the content.
iCopyright's Integrated, Multi-Part Tag for Free Uses and Paid Uses
This article you are reading is a perfect example. Try using the free use copyright links at the top or bottom of this article. E-mail the article to yourself and see what happens. When you get the article via e-mail, don't hesitate to click on one or more of the ads that come with it. Each time you click one, I make as much as $1.00. Go ahead and email this article to a friend, and encourage them to pass it along to their friends. Feel "free" to use the "Print" link to make as many printer-friendly copies as you want. While you are at it, click the "Save" link to save this article to your personal reading room. It will always be there when you want to refer back to it (with a new set of contextual ads each time you view it, of course). Starting to get the picture? You are a publisher. I don't have to explain viral marketing and advertising to you.
The model for these ad-supported free uses is very much alive and well in every medium. People get broadcast television stations for free, as long as they don't mind commercials. People who want advertising-free television get HBO or pay-per-view. People don't pay to use search engines. Advertisers pay. Few people complain about seeing AdWords when they conduct a search using Google. Many newspapers and magazines are free, paid for by advertising. Why not individual articles? In fact, with this model, a publisher may generate more revenue from the pass-along value of one or two articles then they do from the entire issue in which the articles were first published. What is an "issue" today when published on the web? The publisher's web site is not so much a daily, weekly or monthly issue, as much as it is a collection of individual articles.
The Untapped Value of Pass-Along Content
What is the value of pass-along content? When people visit a web site, they don't read every article. But when their boss, colleague, or friend emails them an article, or hands them a copy of one, they typically read it with heightened interest. User-referred content is the most valuable "real estate" a publisher can own. What can be more valuable to a publisher than having their readers increase their circulation? That real estate also has immense value to advertisers, particularly if ads can be relevant to the content, or to the profiles of the recipients of the article. Pass-along content represents new, premium advertising real estate. Unlike physical publications that contain stale ads and ads that may not be relevant to the person who gets the publication from a friend, online content passed between friends can contain fresh, highly relevant ads.
Rather than placing disparate links at the top and bottom of each web page, publishers can now place one integrated link at the top and bottom that provides their users with both free uses (supported by advertising) and traditional reprints and copyright permissions. The revenue that is generated from ad-supported free uses could surpass the revenue the publishers currently receive from reprints and copyright permissions.
User-Controlled Superdistribution
This integrated link stays with the content no matter where it goes. It becomes the publisher's "persistent" copyright notice granting automatic permissions to all that see it. It is intelligent - it knows about the content it is attached to. It is interactive - allowing users to email, print, and otherwise redistribute legally. For example, if Ford Motor Company purchases an e-print from The Wall Street Journal for republication on Ford.com, the iCopyright link goes with it. When visitors to Ford.com e-mail that article to their friends, Ford is happy that the article is being passed-along. The Wall Street Journal is happy because fresh advertisements are placed inside of each email that are relevant to the story and in some cases to the recipients of the story, producing revenue for The Wall Street Journal. The advertisers are happy because their message is reaching a highly qualified audience and provides a mechanism for that audience to immediately act upon the ad by visiting the advertiser's web site or by calling the advertiser.
Marketers call this kind of user-controlled circulation "Superdistribution" or "viral marketing." The content is unshackled from the publisher's control so that it can truly be free, while preserving the publisher's rights and brand, and by providing a way for the publisher to monetize the value of the content. Whether the content resides in the archives hosted by Newsbank and Proquest, sold by aggregators like Factiva and Lexis-Nexis, or redistributed by syndicators and portals like Yahoo, the intelligent copyright tag is forever monetizing it for the publisher.
The Evolution of Digital Copyright
One major publisher after previewing the new iCopyright tag, said, "This is revolutionary stuff. It could change the way we publish and syndicate our content. We constantly have heated internal debates about how best to lock-down our content so that only legitimate customers can get it. With this model, we can stop worrying about that and let our content go wherever users want to take it."
I don't think of iCopyright's Ad-Supported Free Uses as revolutionary. Like most business models, it is evolutionary. Will it work equally as well for information workers and content consumers as it promises to work for content owners and advertisers? Time will tell. I think it will if the ads don't get in the way of the content - if they are non-obtrusive, and if they are relevant to the interests of the user. Whenever I do a Google search I often click the AdWords to the right rather than the links returned from my query, because they take me to what I am looking for. The same could be true for contextual ads placed within content that I receive from friends and colleagues. I also believe that advertiser-supported permissions are a step in the right direction of striking that delicate balance between copyright and free use. Time will tell.
Related Articles:
iCopyright's Advertiser-Supported Free Uses
What they mean to users, publishers and advertisers
iCopyright's Advertiser-Supported Free Uses
How they work and why iCopyright is the ideal partner
Publishers who want to enable advertising-supported free uses can add the iCopyright Tag to their content by signing up here.
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