Publishers Try Online Tool for Detecting Plagiarism, Copyright Infringement

Service allows publishers to detect infringement, help mag business development.

By Vanessa Voltolina
09/17/2008

A company called iCopyright has launched Discovery, a new Web-based service that finds both licensed and unlicensed uses of a publisher's content online. Publishers can use Discovery as a business development tool, a license verification tool, and as a detection tool for plagiarism and copyright infringement.

Discovery works by fingerprinting publisher content and then searches the Web each hour to find sites that are using all or part of the material.

The service identifies Web sites that have obtained a valid license and verifies that they are using the content within the terms of the license. As a plagiarism and copyright infringement detection tool, Discovery sniffs out Web sites that may be using the content in a commercial manner without license or permission from the publisher. It even retains a snapshot of each piece of content it finds on third party sites and creates an audit trail of all actions taken by the publisher and the site with respect to the site's unauthorized use of the content.

To assist magazines with business development, Discovery identifies Web sites that are potential advertisers, subscribers or syndication partners for the publisher.

Currently, Discovery has several hundred magazine clients on board this triple-play verification, detection and development tool, including titles published by Advanstar, Penton, Cygnus, SourceMedia and BNP. “B-to-B mags are an especially important target for us, as well as the top b-to-c magazines,” iCopyright founder and CEO Mike O’Donnell wrote in an e-mail to FOLIO:.

The cost of this service is dependent on the number of articles a publisher is looking to fingerprint and search for, as well as how many matches it finds. The price starts at $500 per month for up to 1,000 articles per month, and includes the greater iCopyright services in addition to Discovery. The price is $1,000 for 1,001 to 5,000 articles per month. Most magazine publishers would be in this range, said O’Donnell, but all magazines are eligible for a 30-day free trial.

O’Donnell added: “If a site is blatantly copying the magazine's content and monetizing it with ads and getting ranked higher in the search engines than the magazine's site, well, they may want that site to cease using their content at their expense.”