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.

As a newspaper or magazine professional, what is your opinion of the Stop Online Piracy Act? Yesterday, the America Society of News Editors came out in opposition of the bill. It is pretty clear that some of the remedies suggested by the bill for online piracy are over-the-top when applied to mundane copyright infringement but in general, wouldn't it benefit the producers of original content (newspapers and magazines) to have a law in place that helped them protect the stories they pay for?