FairShare, a new site launching today in private beta, is looking to help bloggers keep track of their content online. The free service allows users to specify what kind of Creative Commons distribution license they’ve previously assigned to their material, and uses a vast index of the web to see where their content has been distributed and how it has been used. TechCrunch readers can grab one one of 1,000 invites by going here and entering the code “TechCrunch”.
In many ways FairShare is a toned-down version of Attributor (an enterprise-grade web service that helps large media companies search the web for copyright infringement). The two services share the same massive and frequently-updated index of the web, which claims to search 35 billion pages. But while Attributor features a suite of analytics options suited for large companies like the Financial Times and CondéNet, FairShare is a bit more bare-boned, offering a listing of every post that includes your content along with the number of words copied, the percentage of the original article copied, and Yes/No indicators describing if the blog is following the license rules you’ve set.
Getting started with FairShare is straightforward. After entering the URL of your blog’s RSS feed, FairShare will ask for the type of Creative Commons license you’ve assigned to your content (the most common of which will be the ‘Attribution’ license, which requires that other blogs link back to your article whenever they’ve quoted it). The system will then automatically monitor its large index of websites, flagging any sites that have included your content and indicating whether they’ve abided by the license you’ve set.
The service will appeal to two very different groups of people. Established bloggers can use FairShare to see where their content has been copied without attribution, and can respond accordingly. On the other end of the spectrum, fledgling bloggers can use the system to see how their content is being distributed and can use that information to form relationships with other blogs or change the focus of their writing to appeal to their audience. It sounds like FairShare is hoping to appeal more to the latter set – while it will help bloggers find possible cases of copyright infringement, VP of Marketing Rich Pearson says that it’s unlikely that the site will ever offer any tools to help them request take downs.
It will be nice for bloggers to easily look up when other sites are reposting their content, but I doubt many of them will have time to hunt down any offenders, and it’s already fairly easy to tell who is linking to your site using trackbacks. Still, the site’s future plans are promising: FairShare plans to eventually introduce a revenue-sharing system that would allow sites that have distributed their content under appropriate licenses to get a cut whenever their material is published elsewhere.
Can Techcrunch please get rid of the 3 big squares up top on the front page. They’re an eyesore. Replace them with a link or something for christ sakes!
Seems like a pretty cool service!
I like that they let you pick your own license. At last, I can find out who is not linking to me!
Coool
Not to be confused with http://FairSoftware.net, which uses “Fair Shares” and deals with licensing (but not Creative Commons).
Welcome to the neighborhood
http://www.dennys.com/
Everybody. FREE grand slam breakfast tomorrow at Dennys. I am leaving 2 hours early to work when the doors open at 6AM.
Damn life is the shiznit.
You mean there are still people in this world that still eat at Denny’s? I thought Denny’s was like the Waffle House – the only place to go when you are drunk and trying to cool off before driving home.
Denny’s slogan should be “Hey, It’s Late!”
Damion screw you punkass! I eat at Denny’s. They have some good shit. Why don’t you go eat at your beaner restaurant Taco Bell.
I normally wouldn’t go to Denny’s but come on. IT’S FREE.
I like iHop better, but WTF, it’s free. I’m going to be there at 6AM when the doors open on Jefferson in Culver City. There are 2 on Jefferson, so you have a 50/50 split chance of meeting me in the person LOLZ.
I am so sorry John – I really wasn’t meaning to insult your place of employment like that. I do understand. It will be okay
This site doesn’t even have some basic validations in place. Click on “Submit” w/o filling the form, you would understand what I mean.
Isn’t this service much like CopyScape?
http://infolab....ergey/copy.html
Yawn…. None of these have ever worked. Not even the great Sergey Brin’s
@Damion: We’re different than CopyScape in a few ways. You can assign a Creative Commons license so you can get a view that highlights those who aren’t linking back to you or are using your work commercially. You can also choose no license and get everything much like CopyScape. Also, CopyScape is keyword based where as FairShare looks for matching sentences which reduces the false positives greatly
@Chris: Excellent Sergery Brin reference, but check it out before you pass judgment – all you need to do is enter a feed
http://www.fair...c/signupfs.html
“Please give us your info, and we’ll contact you as soon as the service is ready to go. ”
That’s easy for you to say.
I hope the NASDAQ destroys the Dow again tomorrow. That and a good breakfast would really hit the spot along with an easy day @ work.
Hi Rich – Nice product. One thing that is unclear from the writeup is what index your service uses – Google, Yahoo, or a private index run by Attributor/are you owned by Attributor?
- Mark
Thanks for the reply Rich – I got my feeds in waiting for it to update. Looks interesting…
Sounds great but again, what action can we take in response to any possible infringement? The only possible benefit would be asking/requesting the blogger who’s reposted my content to linkback and thats it?!
How are you planning to make it economically sustainable?
Not very useful. Won’t make any money and will shut down soon.
All these so-called apps are just like… final year school projects.
This is a step in the right direction and will hopefully frustrate the creators of those awful scraper sites. I wonder though at the universal applicability (given variation in copyright legislation across the globe), as well as people’s genuine understanding of licensing models and attribution requirements. Let’s retain pragmatism and an element of educating and not just vilifying the ‘accidental infringer’.
Oh, it would be a great link building tool! Apart from that I strongly doubt it would benefit to most bloggers in terms of hunting down abusers, law suits etc.
hey, nice service, thanks for sharing.
FairShare not needed for bloggers? {seesmic_video:{”url_thumbnail”:{”value”:”http://t.seesmic.com/thumbnail/l9RfEDa1jA_th1.jpg”}”title”:{”value”:”FairShare not needed for bloggers? ”}”videoUri”:{”value”:”http://www.seesmic.com/video/2m4qzsvatm”}}}
@mark FairShare uses the same index as Attributor. In other words, if you use FairShare you get the same results as Attributor’s customers like Conde Net and the Financial Times
@Salman At this point, yes, it is purely a visibility service. You can of course contact folks yourself for links. FairShare is not about takedowns though
@Rebecca Because it uses the same index as Attributor, the costs are pretty low. We have several options wrt revenue model but our focus now is giving bloggers visibility on where their posts go.
@Lili Yes, we do think can be a great link building tool. Do you think we should include page rank in the results so you know whom to target?
@Steve Great point – that is one of the reasons the service is based on Creative Commons which has arguably figured out these issues. More coming about FairShare/Creative Commons soon
@jason Definitely interested in your take after your see some results. FairShare has nothing to do with copyright and should indeed give you a way to see how far your work goes and eventually make money from your posts after they leave your site. We’re just starting out but you will see some cool new features rolling in.
Thanks for sharing. Kinda gud thing for speeding up trackbacking process or may be checking if your work/words are being spreaded with same view point you want to.
We’ll be benefitted only if we show our concerns.
Any chance this will spread out to cover other media, for instance, images and the like? I would be interested to know if other people are reposting the non-blog material I keep on my site.
Yes, we can only handle text right now but we do plan to add image capabilities . . . although we’re going to be busy for a while on the text service
@Rich re: adding image capabilities
We did research project at MIT on detecting CC attribution license violations on Flickr images on the web [1]. (I presented this idea at the CC Tech Summit last December)
Generalizing this idea to any properly RDF-annotated image is the direction we are heading right now.
Also, check [2] for some results from the study on license violations of Flickr images on the web.
[1] http://dig.csai...W2009/paper.pdf
[2] http://dig.csai.../results_1.html
http://dig.csai.../results_2.html
http://dig.csai.../results_3.html
I personally use the http://www.copygator.com website, i don’t see how fairshare.cc offers anything above what they offer at copygator.com
1. copygator = automated and brings me results instead of me searching for duplicated content. All i had to do was submit my feed and it started monitoring my feed showing me who’s republished my articles on the web.
2. i get notified by email so it contacts me when it finds copies of my articles online.
3. i use their image badge feature to alert me directly on my website when my content is being lifted.
4. it’s a free service
@Rich: I was wondering why you didn’t reply on my earlier comment.
Now I see validations are up.
@ROW Sorry, I was shamed by your comment as we should have caught this. We still have some basic stuff to add, including feed management, etc. The good news is that some of this will be rolled out this week.
Thanks Rich,
I don’t get it, are you guys part of Attributor, or are you separate from them and have some sort of deal to use their index?
- Mark
Sorry – I wasn’t trying to be evasive. We are part of Attributor.
@Oshani That is pretty compelling data – for blogs, we typically see that 35-40% fail to link back. 78% misattribution on images is amazing.
Hopefully, with visibility, everyone will play fair. We’re a little ways off from adding images, but we will get there with a little luck.
thanks for pointing this out – hopefully, we will meet at the next CC summit!
Great feature .. Would love to see spam blogs getting banned and atleast reigned in.. They are out to cheat people..
Careful – I said the same thing up a few lines and got cussed at by some Denny’s lover…