The value of content....

Publishers of original content are in a difficult position. On the one hand, they want bloggers and smaller websites to reference their articles (though a brief heading or link) and drive traffic back to their sites. In theory, the more sites that pick up on their content and spread it around the web, the more return the original publisher will see in terms of visitors and ultimately advertising revenue. However, what happens all to often is the raw text that is posted by many magazine and newspaper sites is simple copied as a whole and repurposed, which results in a loss of revenue to the original publisher. (The key here being that it's not simply a headline or small bit of text)

This is an especially difficult pill for traditional media companies to swallow. They are, in many ways, still adjusting to the idea of putting their content on the web for "free" and hoping the advertising revenue will come. (And when it does, it's almost always less than they'd get though traditional channels.) Add to that the idea that someone else is getting paid on thier content and you have a lot of unhappy campers.

New problems, however, often breed new innovation.

Forbes.com recently highlighted two promising new companies -- Scribd Store and Attributor. Scribd attempts to correct the problem by having publishers post content though a secured widget. Those wishing to reuse the content must go through the widget to do so. The second, and in my opinion more interesting company, is Attributor. They act as sort of a content cops for thepublisher. Essentially, publishers give Attributor all the content they are posting and Attributor is monitoring the web for repurposing of that content. If it's found, Attributor lets the company know and they can, in turn ask for a fee or tell the ad neworks supporting the other site that they want a share of the ad revenue.

To me, this is a more optimal situation because it does not stop the flow content (which really is in the interest of the publisher), but it also allows them to have some way of being paid as their content is used by others. As internet consumers, we often forget to think about the costs of producing content. In many cases it's actually fairly expensive. If the producers of such content continue to feel they are not being adequately compensated, or worse, that someone else is profitting at their expense, we run the risk that they will either stop producing it altogether.