Newspapers to start a campaign against News Syndication Services

Newspapers to start a campaign against News Syndication Services

An international group of publishers is considering protesting against the online news syndication services, which collect news matter from these news services’ websites and pay no royalty for doing so.

Their actions might include collective action at either a national or international level, for enforcing copyright. They are also aiming at preventing search engines from taking their content for free. This would mean problems for services like Google News, Topix, and perhaps even Technorati.

A task force of global and European publishers is now exploring ways to get payment from Internet search engines and news aggregators. These services pick up news content from official news sources and run ads on these pages to make revenues from hits on them. However, not all of the content available on them is authorized by the original content providers.

Gavin O’Reilly, President of Paris-based World Association of Newspapers said in a statement: “The search engines are increasingly aiming their strategic efforts at traditional content originators and aggregators like newspaper publishers. The irony is that these search engines exist, largely, because of the traditional news and content aggregators and profit at their expense.”

He further added: “Google, Yahoo, and other search engines are not some new breed of social benefactors of information — they are assuredly commercial, very-much-for-profit organizations, and not the new Robin Hoods.”