 |
Fighting Content Piracy
The Tag is the Flag
By MIKE O'DONNELL, Founder & CEO, iCopyright
Anyone who has watched a pirate movie knows that you can tell the good guys from the bad guys by seeing what kind of flag they are flying. On the high seas of the Internet, pirates and privateers can be identified by a different kind of flag - a tag that is embedded within the content. This tag communicates who owns the content and whether it has been properly licensed. Unlike flags that fly high from a ship's mast so that it can be seen for miles, tags embedded within content can be hidden. Rather than using binoculars to identify the content, tags can be identified by software spiders and content auditing tools. A variety of tags are used when publishing content on the Internet. For example, the tag that identifies the title of this article looks like this in HTML, the language of the Web:
<title>Fighting Content Piracy: The Tag is the Flag</title>
The tag that describes this article, and that is used by software spiders to index the content so that people can find it, looks like this:
<meta name=description; content=content piracy, copyright tags, anti-piracy>
Other tags identify the owner, the owner's copyright, and whether the website that has posted the content has a license to do so. For example, consider an article written by the Associated Press posted at
https://license.icopyright.net/user/webEprint.act?id=3.5721-1211. Part of the hidden copyright tag embedded within this article looks like this: http://license.icopyright.net/3.5721-1211.
The number 3.5721-1211 identifies a record in a licensing database that contains, among other things, the publisher (AP), the publication (AP Wire Service), the article (Joke
Book Editor Settles Leno Lawsuit), and the licensee (Mike
ODonnell). Part of the tag is rendered as a visible link. At the bottom of this article is the following URL:
http://license.icopyright.net/3.5721-1211. Anyone can click on this tag, or type the URL into a browser, to review the license record and verify that the content’s license is valid. Not only does the tag communicate that the article was properly licensed by
Mike ODonnell, it also directs readers back to AP to easily obtain their own licenses to reprint or distribute the article.
No Tag, No Flag: Identifying Pirated Content
Just as a ship with no flag signifies no allegiance to company or country, content that is not tagged has no homeport. The first step in minimizing content piracy is to include copyright licensing tags on every article published. Even if the article is distributed through aggregators or syndicators, or licensed for republication by commercial users, the copyright tag should go with it. Content should always be able to find its way back to homeport. The absence of copyright tags can often reveal as much about the content as the presence of copyright tags. Content with no copyright tags indicates that the tags were either stripped (a sure tip off that the content may be pirated), that the publisher does not use copyright tags (a poor practice), or even that the publisher does not care if the content is reused by others.
Many users cut-and-paste content from websites and email it or post it on their websites and Intranets. This practice, while common, is rarely legal. Whether from ignorance or carelessness, most users do not give this practice a second thought. This may start to change with anti-piracy efforts of publishers and industry associations, and with more diligent efforts by companies wishing to avoid the embarrassment and penalties of copyright infringement. When users cut-and-paste content, the hidden tags go with it, making it easy for specially trained spiders to identify. As noted in the AP article example above, it is also easy to ascertain whether or not that piece of content was legally licensed.
What if the tags are stripped? Some users are smart enough to strip the visible part of the tag, but few users know enough to strip the hidden tags. Tags are often dispersed throughout the page, even within the body of the article itself. Spiders can be trained to seek out and identify tag fragments. Even if the user strips the publisher’s name, logo and copyright notice, smart spiders can flag the content as potentially pirated content.
What about content that has been taken and republished offline in Word, Powerpoint, or other applications? While spiders can not readily locate and identify this content, certain content auditing tools can do so. In the same way that compliance agents use auditing software to check for unlicensed use of computer software programs, content auditing software can be used to discover instances of content piracy. Companies would be wise to conduct their own audits before a regulatory and compliance agent comes knocking. Just as with software, companies will either need to show that they own the content, or that they have the proper licenses from the owners. What’s more, companies will need to show that they have a license for the specific ways in which their companies are using the content. For example, a company may hold a license for 500 photocopies of an article, but if that article is being hosted on the company’s website, it could be held liable for using the content outside the scope of the license.
This can be a particularly thorny issue for companies who hold licenses from Factiva, Lexis-Nexis, Copyright Clearance Center, iCopyright, and other licensing agents. Many people within companies that hold these types of licenses believe that they have carte blanche to use the content anyway they see fit. This is usually not the case. Most licenses specify terms and conditions that expressly limit how the content may be used. For example, if a company makes reprints of an article licensed through Factiva and distributes the reprints at a trade show, the license from Factiva does not likely cover this kind of external distribution.
In summary, copyright tags can not only identify whether the content has been properly licensed, they can also communicate what rights and permissions are covered by the license.
The Flag of Copyright Education & Enforcement
Who should carry the flag of copyright education and enforcement? Some publishers try, but find it is like trying to stem a flood with a single sandbag. Most publishers lack the resources, the time, or both. The fact is a lot of content pirates are customers of publishers – their readers, subscribers and advertisers. Publishers dislike upsetting their customers unless they do something really egregious. Should the copyright system vendors provide enforcement? No, they are better technologists than they are police and lawyers. Content producers should instead look to their industry association. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), for example, leads the enforcement efforts for the music industry. The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) does the same for the movie industry. The SIIA is leading the copyright education and enforcement efforts for the information industry. The best way that publishers can assist these efforts is by adding a copyright tag to their content.
Regardless of who is enforcing copyright compliance, anti-piracy efforts are greatly assisted by copyright tags and the public at-large. The tag and users of content help identify pirates. The compliance agents can then go after the pirates. How do copyright tags and content users, working independently, identify and report pirates to compliance agents? As outlined above, the tag knows who owns the content and whether the website, the company, or the person in possession of it at any given moment has the rights to use it. Content users can identify the owner with one click, or by typing the licensing address into a browser, as with the AP article example above. Content users can see if the content being displayed for them has been licensed, if it is not coming from the owner directly. The knowledge that the general public – out of motives both fair and foul – have the ability to verify at any time whether content has been legally licensed from its owners is usually enough to deter potential pirates from breaking the rules.
Consider a lone driver who uses the car pool lane to save time. In addition to enduring the glares of the drivers he is passing, the violator also knows that any one of those drivers can use their cell phones to call the number posted on the signs along the route to report him. In the same way that whistle blowers tip compliance agents about their company’s use of unlicensed software, content users can report content piracy. The best tips usually come from the public (or a company’s employees). When company executives know that publishers embed a copyright tag within their content, and that their employees and visitors to their websites can check for valid licenses using the tag, they have a tendency to make copyright compliance a company policy – and to actively enforce that policy.
In the same way that neighborhoods with an active crime watch program have less crime, companies that have an active copyright compliance program have less copyright infringement. Self-policing is a great deterrent of content piracy. The combination of the industry association’s copyright education, compliance certification and enforcement programs, with copyright tags embedded in the content and the diligence of content users, provides the basis for an effective industry-wide anti-piracy program.
Choosing a Copyright Tag
Different copyright tags are designed to accomplish different functions. The most basic copyright tags identify the publisher and display a stagnant copyright notice. More sophisticated copyright tags are interactive and intelligent. They provide more detailed licensing information, sell licenses, and communicate with spiders and content auditing servers. Whether publishers wish to create their own copyright tag, or use a third-party copyright tag like iCopyright, RightsLink, or DOI, depends upon what functions the publisher expects the tag to serve. The more functions a copyright tag supports, the more software and server infrastructure is required. Most publishers would be better served using a third-party tag since the vendor has made the investment in the technology. The benefits also outweigh the costs of creating and supporting a homegrown tag. Interestingly enough, the cost and complexity of implementing a third-party tag has little to do with the functionality provided by the tag or the return on investment that the publisher can expect to receive from implementing the tag.
Publishers would do well to investigate the costs, benefits, and complexity of the various copyright tagging systems. Some of the questions to ask are:
- What does it cost to implement and activate the tag?
- Is there a monthly subscription fee, or minimum charge?
- What content publishing formats does the tag support, i.e., XML, HTML, PDF, other?
- What kinds of copyright licensing functions are supported?
- What kinds of license records are kept and are the records accessible by anyone wishing to verify that the content has been properly licensed?
- What kind of user data and activity tracking is provided?
- How much licensing revenue do publishers who currently use the tag generate?
- How much content is currently tagged and how many licenses have been issued through the tag?
- Does the tag provide content auditing and anti-piracy services?
Content piracy is a rampant problem that has plagued the information industry since the early days of the web. Outsells, Inc. reports the problem has reached epidemic proportions. PricewaterhouseCoopers and other analysts have estimated that content piracy costs publishers more than one billion annually. Publishers can best counter the problem and begin recovering lost revenue by tagging their content and supporting their industry association’s anti-piracy programs.
Mike O’Donnell is the Founder & CEO of iCopyright, developers of the award-winning iCopyright system. The SIIA and iCopyright have partnered to provide SIIA members with tools to tag and monitor online content – preventing copyright infringement and unlawful use.
« Back to Industry Articles on Copyright
|
 |
Click here to chat with an iCopyright representative.
|
|
![[Get Copyright Permissions]](http://license.icopyright.net/images/icopy-w.gif){kind=small}
