Online Journalism News

FT.com signs deal to track online content

The Financial Times has signed a new deal to track online copyright infringements of its content.

The FT.com deal with the Attributor service will allow the site to monitor how its content is being used online and take action against copyright breaches.

The site, which undertook a two-month trial of the service, is the latest online publisher to use Attributor, following partnerships with CondeNet, Reuters and the Press Association (PA).

Speaking to Journalism.co.uk, FT.com editor Rob Grimshaw said that the new deal would help clamp down on copyright infringements, but also feed into the site's online strategy.

"There were a few things [instances of copied content] that made us raise our eyebrows," said Grimshaw.

"We didn't have anything tracking our content previously, so you are just guessing. This has given us a whole new insight into where our content is and who is using it.

"It's interesting seeing what people are picking up and linking to. Figuring out which topics and areas are of greater interest to the community is good intelligence for us."

The service lets publishers tailor how they track online use of their content. For example, they can specify that more than 50 per cent of an article must be lifted before they are notified.

Content-owners can also create settings for how different sites should be dealt with depending on how much content they have used.

"We have to take a balanced approach. If people are using large chunks of our content we would like them to have a licence to do that. We are relatively relaxed about people using smaller extracts, but we would like them to give us a link back," said Grimshaw.

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