THE SYNDICATION BUSINESS

As a prelude to my epic post (coming on Friday, I promise) about Thailand's copyright laws I will provide a brief summary of the content syndication and licensing business. It's important because this is the business that is directly affected when a publisher (anywhere, not just in Thailand) reprints an article without permission.
I will use a fictitious example of XYZ Media, a U.S. publisher of a business magazine. Its stories are published in a weekly magazine and as breaking news on a website. It gains revenue from those stories from sales of the magazine and from advertising, both in the magazine and on the website. Without those stories there would be no income.
The publisher can also gain secondary income by syndicating or licensing this same content for use by other publishers, both print and online. This is a big business. One UK publisher is selling rights to just 10 of its daily stories (for translation into Thai) for close to 2 million baht per year, so when unauthorised publication takes place you can only imagine how those publishers who play by the book are feeling. Pretty upset would be an understatement.