March 24, 2006 – Seattle, WA - A Seattle-based company which helps publishers of community newspapers digitize and preserve their archives is urging publishers to protect the content they place online.  SmallTownPapers, Inc. has discovered that publishers of newspapers in America’s small towns are frequently unaware of how to prevent companies from profiting from the newspaper’s content available for free on the paper’s website.

 The exploitation of newspaper content available online is a worldwide issue.  The Financial Times reports the World Association of Newspapers has launched a campaign in Europe to prevent search engines from profiting at the expense of newspaper publishers.  Search engines are businesses that produce an index of the Internet and offer a free search to the public in exchange for posting advertising.  To create their indexes, search engines have programs called “spiders” which “crawl” the internet and store information about websites they encounter.  Most search engines crawl to build search indexes that link to a publisher’s website which is good in that it drives traffic to the website. Concern surrounds those companies which take the free content, distribute it and charge a fee for the information.

 ”The problem is that some businesses are profiting from the free articles without compensating the newspaper publishers who created and own the content,” says Keith Weinberger, Vice President of Content Distribution for SmallTownPapers.  “Without precautions put in place by publishers, these businesses can continue to operate this way. Some companies are using crawlers to build databases of information, such as legal notices and obituaries, and then they sell access to the data.  The companies take the profit and none of it is returned to the content owner.”

Without taking steps to detail how their website content is to be used, publishers are inadvertently allowing businesses to profit from their work. 

 Here are five easy ways a publisher can begin to protect their website investment:

1. Install robots.txt file

Robots.txt gives you control over which, if any, crawlers can index your site and what information they’re allowed to index.  A good resource for learning about robots.txt is http://www.robotstxt.ca/ or to see how the NY Times does it, visit http://nytimes.com/robots.txt.

2. Draft and post a copyright, “terms of use” and license agreement

A copyright and “terms of use” statement can define the scope of how visitors may use your content.  You can include terms that exclude the re-use or re-sale of the information without express written consent.  Include a license agreement to detail specific allowed uses of your content.  Note that the license agreement may only be enforceable if the user agrees to it -- usually by clicking an "I agree" button.  Site owners can try to write a license that makes any download or transmission of material from the site an "agreement" to the license.  Whether that will be enforceable will depend on state law.

3. Place a copyright notice on each article

A copyright notice will state ownership and permissible use of the article.  Include “© 2007 Your Name. All rights reserved.” With each article to remind visitors of the copyright in place.  You can place a copyright notice on the home page or every page of the website.  To protect images, place a copyright symbol by the image or use a watermark.

4. Follow-up on copyright infringement

      Monitor the internet for unauthorized use of your material.  Contract with a company which specializes in that process (Net Enforcers, Inc.) or simply use the search engines and do it yourself.  Launch a search for a sentence from your material and see if it comes up.  Note:  To file an infringement claim, your website must have been registered with the U.S. Copyright Office.

5. Partner with companies which can help protect your content

SmallTownPapers provides newspaper publishers with a new layer of copyright protection.  Partnering with SmallTownPapers ensures your content is distributed under contract with proper protections in place.  For more information visit www.smalltownpapers.com and www.stpns.com.  

For additional reading on copyright issues important to publishers of small community newspapers, visit the SmallTownPapers website.  Related articles are posted in the website’s “press section” at http://www.smalltownpapers.com/press/media.htm.

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About SmallTownPapers®

SmallTownPapers is an online gateway to newspapers from small town America — past and present.  Working with publishers from across the country, the company digitally scans current and archived newspapers and then provides online access.  Through the SmallTownPapers website, the newspaper archives can be searched by keyword or phrase and viewed as originally printed.  SmallTownPapers, Inc. is based in Seattle, WA.  For more information visit www.smalltownpapers.com.