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Beamups , a website where news organisations and producers can sell unused, raw or archived film and video footage, has signed international deals with news agencies in China and Turkey.

China's main news agency Xinhau and Turkey's Ihlas will see their content on the Beamups site, which now carries material from more than 1,000 professional news organisations, broadcasters, production companies and freelance journalists.

The site already counts the BBC and Al Jazeera amongst its partners and was initially launched in the Middle East in April 2009 before coming to the UK in June . The new deals will increase coverage of countries including Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq and make use of Xinhua's 100 bureaux across the world.

Content is sold to customers including the BBC, Sky News and the Daily Telegraph, with 35 per cent of the fee going to Beamups. The site has been nominated for a 2010 Media Guardian Innovation Award for its business model, which allows buyers to shop for footage "a la carte" without subscription.

The business was conceived by two news and documentary cameramen, Boaz Eshtai and Yosi Romano, and as such encourages individual and freelance journalists to post content and receive money for multiple sales of their material, while setting their own rights for reuse of the content.

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Written by

Laura Oliver
Laura Oliver
Laura Oliver is a freelance journalist, a contributor to the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, co-founder of The Society of Freelance Journalists and the former editor of Journalism.co.uk (prior to it becoming JournalismUK)

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