Internet copycats hit dailies

Hyderabad, Dec. 2: The mushrooming of websites across the world is leading to plagiarism of news with thousands of online publishers “lifting” reports from various newspapers.

According to a study released by the Fair Syndication Consortium, a over 75,000 websites re-used at least one unlicensed newspaper report or article between October 15 and November 15 this year.

The study comes as a shock to top print media executives who are meeting here in the city to discuss various issues confronting the newspaper industry. There has also been a debate on monetising the content.

“On an average, articles from national newspapers from across the world are reproduced on the Internet up to 15 times. Blog sites, which are primarily blamed for the spread of re-used content, were actually only responsible for less than 10 per cent of the news reproduction,” it pointed out.