A story over at TechCrunch this morning alerted me to a group known as the Fair Syndication Consortium. The idea behind this group is to try and provide fair compensation to content authors whose material is being used (often without permission) on websites earning revenue from advertisements.

The first hurdle I see with the lofty goals of this group is identifying the recycled content.

Surprise, surprise, Attributor, the company responsible for the creation of this consortium already has products available to help with identifying and locating your content on third party websites. How convenient for them!

The second problem I see with the plans of the consortium is attracting players from both sides, advertisers and publishers. As a website owner, they are hoping to appeal to your sense of fairness.

By joining the consortium, you are standing up for a vibrant and fair content economy.

Listen, if I’m ripping off someones content to populate my own sites, the last thing I care about is a fair content economy! So I guess this is why the consortium is trying to get publishers involved.

With the assistance of Google or Yahoo, this consortium could potentially go after your ad earnings without you even knowing. That may scare some of these thieves straight, but more likely they’ll just switch to a non participating network for their ads.

Finally, this consortium almost seems to be encouraging more scam bloggers and content recyclers. If I know the content owner will be automatically receiving a cut of my ad revenue, I may not be so hesitant to launch more of these sites. I’m sure others share my feelings on this one.

The more I think about it, this whole thing reeks off RIAA’s infamous bully tactics. Threaten anyone and everyone, let the courts sort it out. Don’t get me wrong! I’m all for condemning the thieves of the internet who try to make ad revenue off of someone else’s content.

What worries me here is the emergence of an online content police force.