New technologies target theft of online intellectual property
This column appeared May 1, 2001, in the Newspaper Association of America’s Digital Edge. Here’s the version on the NAA site.
Spooked by the Napster-led peer-to-peer file-sharing movement, where computer users swap music files and other content in a free-wheeling data bazaar, an increasing number of Web publishers and businesses are taking steps to protect their intellectual property.
During the past several months, newspapers ranging in size from the Albuquerque Journal, to The New York Times have launched online permissions services. An entertainment Web site posted the script of a hot new movie — and installed anti-theft technology to prevent it from being copied to fan sites. A small weekly news site in Arkansas installed watermarking technology to protect news photos from being misappropriated.
[Read more…] about Preventing content sites from being Napsterized