The US news industry opened a new front on Monday in its battle to find a better online business model, with the publication of a study intended to arm publishers in their attempts to make allies out of former foes such as Google, Yahoo and AOL. The Fair Syndication Consortium, a group of more than 1,500 newspaper publishers, said a month-long study of how news spread across the Internet found that the average American newspaper story was being copied 4.4 times in full or in part by unauthorized websites. The study of 101,000 articles published by 157 newspapers found that more than 75,000 sites reused 112,000 almost exact copies without authorization, and a further 520,000 articles in part. The problem was most serious for large national publishers, with 15 unauthorized reuses on average. Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, publishers can already force ad networks to ensure that unauthorized stories alongside which their advertising appears are taken down, although few such requests are made. But publishers are eager to try a different approach, which would allow them to claw back the ad revenues being made by sites that are distributing their content without the authorization of a traditional syndication agreement.
