Where Oh Where Does Our Online Content Go?

Digital content tracker Attributor Corp creates tools to help publishers determine where their words, images and videos are appearing elsewhere on the Web. Clients include the Associated Press, CondeNet and Thomson Reuters.

Get a take down notice from one of them, it’s probably because they found you via Attributor.

Now though the company’s helping the little guy and have teamed up with Creative Commons to create Fairshare, a service that — like their flagship — tracks digital content but in this case to determine whether re-use of your content falls under the Creative Commons licensing of your choosing.

Use is simple. Visit the Fairshare site, take out an account, select what Creative Commons license you want the service to measure against and enter your site’s RSS feed.

Twelve to 16 hours later you can log into your dashboard and you’ll receive a list of URLs where your content appears. Content that violates your Creative Commons license is flagged for review.

What you do from there is up to you. Hire a swat team of lawyers?

Not quite our style. We just think it cool that all these digital assets carry fingerprints that can be tracked throughout the Web.