Insider Chatter by Donna Bogatin » Tom Curley AP Crusade: Google AdSense Lawsuit Near? Thanks to Attributor

November 6, 2007

Tom Curley AP Crusade: Google AdSense Lawsuit Near? Thanks to Attributor

As more readers are deemed to be trading newspapers for Websites, the Associated Press has sued VeriSign’s Moreover Technologies news aggregation unit, claiming it is making improper use of AP’s copyright-protected headlines, stories and photos.

Tom Curley, AP CEO: Our organization “spends hundreds of millions of dollars annually to provide original coverage of vital breaking news that cannot be obtained elsewhere.” Nevertheless, Moreover is wantonly “freeriding on our newsgathering and our reporting of news from around the world.”

Curley has recently made sure another online news aggregation freeloader paid up, Google News!

SEE: What Google News? AP: Google Plays Second Fiddle to Yahoo

BUT, Did Curley end up negotiating a bum deal for AP with the world’s number one search engine. After all, he advised the Columbia School of Journalism last week that “The portals are runing off with our best stuff, and we’re afraid or unable to make or enforce deals that drive fair value.”

SEE: Associated Press: Smart, or NOT, with Google, Yahoo Deals

What about Curley’s exhortation to Columbia Journalism that if the founders of AP, many moons ago, had seen a Google, a Yahoo or a Facebook, “they would have figured out what to do about them.”

Curley assures HE knows what to do NOW:

Lest you think we’re going off the deep end and giving it away for free, we have strong new efforts to protect news Web sites from unauthorized scraping through tighter site protocols and content tagging.

SO, will Curley be taking advantgage of the just launched Attributor “Content Monitoring and Analysis Platform” TO SUE GOOGLE FOR PROFITEERING OFF OF ADSENSE COPYRIGHT ABUSE OF AP OWNED PROPERTY?

The Associated Press has been “tracking the use of AP content across the Internet” with Attributor since May. Now that Attributor has moved from beta to open for real business, will Curley follow-up on his call to monetization arms last week, and his lawsuit against VerisSign for copyright infringement.

In Attributor Launch Blasts AdSense Pirating: Google Beware yesterday, I present the Attibutor sales pitch for its service, it is an anti-Google AdSense one, big time, despite Attributor’s assertion that it does not wish to be a “copyright cop.”

Attributor proudly hails “to safeguard its intellectual property rights, the Associated Press is already implementing Attirbutor’s technology,” to combat the “plagiarist’s paradise” that is the Web.

The Wild, Wild, Web, according to Attributor:

Many sites will repost large chunks of content without any licensing agreement or even attribution. The ability to instantly monetize Web pages has spawned a nwe generation of plagiarists, with millions of splogs (spam blogs) using RSS feeds to automatically scrape content for financial gain.

Attributor underscores it “empowers publishers to send DMCA takedown notices” and seek the removal of copied content from search engines. The benefits to the AP are clear, Attibutor notes: “With greater visibility into where its content goes, the AP can more efficiently track and pursue unauthorized usage of its content.”

HOW WILL CURLEY PURSUE THE UNAUTHORIZED USAGE OF AP CONTENT AT GOOGLE ADSENSE SUPPORTED SPLOGS?

Google also profits from the AdSense-supported plagiarism plague via its sale of high-priced AdWords at Google.com, as Attibutor’s evidence of top SERP ranking of splogs illustrates.

Curley laid down the copyright infringement gauntlet last week, will he soon fire the next AP lawsuit against AdSense-supported, unauthorized online resuers of AP content, thanks to Attributor?

After all, Attributor advises ”Google is unacceptable to publishers” and is suffering from a “prisoners dilemma.”