Attributor’s FairShare Guardian service monitored 913 popular books in 14 categories in the fourth quarter of 2009.  FairShare tracked the number of successful downloads completed for each of the 913 titles on four file sharing sites that make download data available (4shared.com, scribd.com, wattpad.com and docstoc.com). Across those four sites, a total of 3.2 million downloads took place.

Across the top 25 one-click hosting sites a total download figure of over 9 million copies was projected with an estimated loss of $380 million. Each book’s retail price and category information was collected from Amazon.com.

Among the 14 book categories tracked, piracy was most common in the business and investing category with an average of 13,000 free downloads per title. The professional and technical category trailed followed by science, computer and Internet.

The 913 titles in this study represents works from publishers totaling 13.5 percent of the U.S. book publishing market. Projecting the $380 million value to the entire industry results in total potential piracy of $2.8 billion.
 

Related Articles:

>Illegal File Sharing In The UK Declines

>Streaming Music Turning Users Away From Music

>French Lawmakers Take Up Revised Internet Piracy Bill

We won’t fanny about.  In short, Attributor tracked content created by over 100 publishers to see how it spread in unauthorized ways.  It discovered that, "[a]cross all sites in the study, publishers have an untapped off-site audience that is nearly 1.5 times the size of the audience that visits their destination site."

 Huge Audience Losses

Even larger figures were arrived at in categories covering automobiles, travel, entertainment, sports, and technology.

So content theft could be depriving publishers of massive amounts of money.  Attributor calculated, "Using a cpm of $1, 42 percent of publishers studied are missing out on up to $50k in annual ad revenue; 33 percent are missing out on up to $250k in annual ad revenue and 25 percent are missing out on more than $250k in annual ad revenue from off-site content."

Of course, since Attributor offers content monitoring products, and 100 publishers don’t exactly make for a huge sample, these findings may fall into the grain-of-salt category.  They seem far too good to ignore, however, so publishers should look into sending out some licensing offers, link requests, and removal notices.

The news company has asked Attributor to assign a fingerprint to all Reuters’ content and monitor the web in real-time, looking for those that simply swipe entire stories.

As well as coming down on content thieves, Reuters will look for legitimate sites that it can sign distribution deals with.

“Attributor’s technology gives us the critical business intelligence to pursue new opportunities for licensing and use of original content,” said Ric Camacho, Vice President, Digital Syndication at Reuters in a press release. “This agreement is part of Reuters strategy of innovation as we continue to develop next-generation digital news syndication.”

So here’s a thought. Maybe Google can acquire Attributor and provide blog publishers with the same type of service. That way, when the blood-sucking scrapers steal our content, Google will know who to credit for the original work.

Comments

AP Hires Firm To Track Online Content

Attributor will use its technology to fingerprint AP copy to identify and document where it appears on the Internet.

“Our agreement with Attributor will enable AP to safeguard its investment in creating and distributing news reports, while assuring licensees that unauthorized use will not diminish the value of their licenses,” said AP General Counsel Srinandan Kasi.

“These services are part of the next-generation licensing and enforcement services we plan to provide to our global network of members and subscribers.”

The Attributor platform will initially monitor stories that are most likely to be popular with readers. The AP will be able to follow their content and spot copyright violations.

The AP also sees Attributor being able to provide them with information on what stories receive the most online traffic, which could help create more revenue.

“Attributor aims to bring transparency and accountability to the online content economy. As one of the largest producers and distributors of online content, AP is a perfect first implementation for our highly scalable platform,” said Attributor CEO Jim Brock.

 “In addition to helping publishers of all kinds protect the value of content assets for authorized licensees, we will also help them capture additional editorial and advertising value.”