Reuters and the corporate identity

This has got to be on of the stupidest and most aggravating news tidbits I have seen in some time: REUTERS TO DEPLOY CONTENT MONITORING SOLUTION FROM FAST

“As the world’s largest international multimedia news agency and content provider, it is important to know as much as we can about how Reuters’ copyrighted news content is being used by our subscribers, as well as the general public,” Paul Hansford, Global Head of Content Quality at Reuters.

“FAST’s ability to filter and retrieve news results from thousands of data sources, in multiple languages, with the highest relevancy for our subscribers has impressed us. We are looking forward to seeing how the implementation of FAST ESP will help us track copyright infringements and protect our corporate identity.”

Ahh, what a crybaby. Feeling threatened by Bloggers are we? At any rate this will be a futile effort. As a statistical tool FAST sounds great. But as for actually doing something about people copying their news snippets … forget about it. I think it is fairly simple actually. If people state a source for their quote everything is fine and it might actually increase the visitors to a site such as Reuters. If a source is failed to be given, then the news site in question is a sloppy journalistic mess and should be avoided.
I wonder if this move can’t be set to violate some basic UN charter on human rights. Hmmmm. Anyway. This issue of copyrighting the ground you walk on has become quite a nuisance. The good news is of course that they’re fighting a battle they cannot win. In the end they might get whacked so hard that it will mean the premature end for the long running news aggregator.

So much for protecting the coorporate identity and their good name. From now on, Reuters will be dishonored and spat upon. Nice move.