Full story from AdAge here.

This effort makes sense. It is just hard to have a lot of confidence in newspapers when they team up for new ventures- their track record is horrible. However, let’s hope this works- clearly there is a need. By the way – does this mean that newspapers are for SOPA? Just a few days ago editorial organizations all came out against it.

New York Times, Washington Post Expand Policing of Article Pilfering Online

Newspapers Form NewsRight, a For-Profit Company Tracking
Sites That Scrape Content

The New York Times Co., The Washington Post Co., The
Associated Press and 26 other news companies began a joint venture today
to police websites that use their articles without consent and demand
fees for legitimate use.

The NewsRight venture is a for-profit entity spun out of an Associated
Press program started two years ago to explore ways to stem content
pilfering on the web — a practice known as "scraping" — and to
capitalize on a news-reading audience that is migrating online. Large
news organizations have been suffering financial losses as a result of
scraping, according to David Westin, 59, the former head of Walt Disney Co.‘s ABC News who became NewsRight’s chief executive officer in April.