Hachette Signs with Attributor to Fight Online Piracy

By Jim Milliot -- Publishers Weekly, 6/17/2009 2:37:00 PM

To help it battle unlawful postings of its works, Hachette Book Group has contracted with Attributor to use that company’s anti-piracy protection service to monitor the Web for illegal use of its content. First developed in late 2007, Attributor’s Web-crawling tool checks a variety of sites, including document hosting sites, and social media and social networking sites for unauthorized posts drawn from Hachette’s books. Attributor alerts Hachette to its findings, who can then demand that the posts be taken down. David Young, HBG CEO, said that while the publisher’s legal team is spending an increasing amount of time checking sites for pirated content, it became clear the company needed to “automate and augment our monitoring,” as the number of illegal postings spread. “Attributor is an essential resource in achieving HBG’s commitment to combating online piracy and protecting our authors’ work,” Young said.

Attributor has made similar deals with other organizations, such as the AP, but this is its first agreement with a book publisher, said the company’s Rich Pearson. Over the last few months, Attributor has been testing software that can track content held in pdf files, something that has become a major problem for book publishers, Pearson said. While some other of its clients allow for some posting of its work--especially if it links back to its own site--the book publishers Attributor has talked to are mostly interested in taking down the posts, Pearson said. Deals with other book publishers are in the works, Pearson said.