'NewsRight' Launched By 29 News Outlets To Track Stories Online

The Associated Press and 28 news organizations -- including The New York Times Co. and The Washington Post Co. -- are launching a company that will measure the unpaid online use of their original reporting and seek to convert unauthorized websites, blogs and other newsgathering services into paying customers.

The company, called NewsRight, brings together efforts started by the AP and its partners in October 2010 to track the use of stories on websites, blogs and other Internet forums through what it calls the News Registry. NewsRight encodes original stories with hidden data that includes the writer's name and when it was published. The encoded stories send back reports to the registry that describe where a story is being used and who is reading it. The technology can even locate stories that have been cut and pasted in whole or in part.