Pay for 2257 info?

[lassiter]

Originally Posted by RawAlex

They are obliged by law to provide the documents.

Not really. The affiliate is obliged by law to have the docs if he uses sponsor content, but nothing in 2257 says the sponsor has to be forthcoming with any data to an affiliate. So some sponsors may possibly be choosing to depend on text links and SEs to get traffic to their sites, since sponsors that choose not to provide the data to affiliates are gonna lose a lot of their income otherwise.

As for grandfathered content licensed prior to the new regulations - well, that's a huge area of ambiguity right now, which may be how DoJ wants it.

[Edit: Oops - I see the original poster is mentioning content providers, not sponsors. Well, I still don't think the primary producer is technically obliged to provide actual docs to a licensee, but the licensee is obliged to have them! Primary content producers will have a damn hard time selling content if they fail to do it.]