Last Friday, Duncan Riley from The Blog Herald posted a short item about another blog stealing his content. Today, Duncan follows-up with his case against WebProNews. In a lengthy post, Duncan provides a number of examples of how he feels that WebProNews has stolen his content without proper attribution.
Sure, a lot of bloggers are ametuers and don’t know any better, or if you dug through the archives of the Blog Herald I’ve probably done it by accident once or twice as well, but when your a paid writer for a leading internet portal you shouldn’t just know better, you do know better, and when you don’t play by the rules its not an accident, its a concious decision.
Duncan also provides examples of quotes taken from other publications without credit being given to the original source.
Update: Jason Lee Miller of WebProNews has provided a well-written response in the comments.
Here is my (our)response as posted on Blog Herald’s and ProBlogger’s sites.
I found the need to rail on me, to understate it, surprising. That claims were unfounded and exaggerated, I found even more surprising. This whole thing seems not to be so much about attribution, but the method by which sources are cited—which is splitting hairs for unknown motives (maybe traffic?).
There are various methods for citations, many of which are covered under Fair Use, and the methods I chose were similar to many major news sources like CNN and CNet. A live link is not required, just enough information to let readers know where you got the information. In fact, Fair Use goes to greater lengths to protect unpublished works, more than published works—saying again and again that small blocks of content can be borrowed from published works for commentary, criticism, parody, et cetera.
First and foremost, WebProNews is not a blog. The writers here are not bloggers. We are industry reporters relaying information that we find—and quite often this information comes from bloggers, rumor mills, emails, press releases, major news organizations. In short, we have many sources, and if a story is similar in content to someone else’s story, often it is coincidental. This is a concept known as parallel development. If 6 bloggers are talking about the same topic and all linking to the same original source, it is not my responsibility to cite all six bloggers. The original source should suffice.
Maybe we can question Mr. Riley about his 100 blogs in 100 days feature. Interestingly enough, Jennifer Garret (http://www.angelfire.com/grrl/jen_garrett/2005_08_01_archivednews.html) , at nearly the same time launched similar coverage entitled, wait for it, 100 blogs in 100 days. Is she an idea thief too? Just because there is simultaneous coverage of a topic, it doesn’t mean that everybody is stealing from the great and powerful Riley.
When NBC, ABC, and CBS run the same story, are they plagiarizing each other? Do you ever hear exactly who all of their sources are? Yet, they tell the story “as if it is their own.� No one has exclusive rights to factual, publicly available information. Further, I’ve seen several examples you might chalk up to parallel development where I’ve broken a story, or expressed an opinion, or developed a clever headline, only to find an article very similar to my own within the next day or two. Did I get bent out of shape about it? No, it comes with job. There are more important things to worry about.
But if I have improperly attributed, it was a hasty accident. I have no wish to be a thief, only an interesting writer providing interesting information for our readership. Improper attribution benefits me in no way and I try to at least cite the original source, if not all the supplemental sources. Let me reiterate: reporting on what people are talking about is not idea theft. It is reporting, plain and simple.
Another interesting correlation: a short time ago, I criticized Mr. Riley’s opinion in this article on the state of the blogosphere (http://www.webpronews.com/news/ebusinessnews/wpn-45-20050826BlogBuzzCanBeMisleading.html). Isn’t interesting that a short time after I disagree with him in a widely read article, I am broadsided with several, perhaps libelous, accusations? Just pulling that up for thought.
We, at WebProNews, do attribute. We do not, as a rule, always use live links (though often we do). This is not wrong in any way. Many mainstream news sites attribute without live links. The lack of live linking is not tantamount to plagiarism in any way. Follow these examples of news sources not using live links.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/internet/09/12/techtest.googlebook.ap/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/09/09/spark.gizmondo/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/internet/09/08/katrina.data.ap/index.html
http://news.com.com/iPhone+next+on+Apples+mobile-music+list/2100-1039_3-5860427.html?tag=st_lh
http://news.com.com/A+journalist+and+blogger+tries+teaching/2100-1025_3-5859612.html?tag=st_lh
http://news.com.com/eBay+to+buy+Skype+for+2.6+billion+in+cash%2C+stock/2100-1030_3-5860055.html?tag=st_lh
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9311134/
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9307764/
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/930780
The examples cited by Mr. Riley do not illustrate instances of quotes that are not attributed.
The story about the secretaries in Australia being fired over an email skirmish where Mr. Riley accuses me of “quote theft,� contains a quote that, when a Google search is done, returns over 100 sites printing the exact same quote. I borrowed the quote, a small portion of previously published material, and cited, although not in a way (live links I suppose) that Mr. Riley would like apparently, the original source News.com.au.
The “Case 3: weird attribution,� is another example of citing a source in a method Mr. Riley apparently takes issue with. But, I did cite Search Engine Journal, as well as his site. So I don’t see the point. It looks like he’s grasping at straws.
“Case 4: different takes, same mistake,� where he admits he has a weak case, is another example of parallel development where he somehow think all news is Mr. Riley’s news and therefore everybody else who reports on it is a thief. Well, note the first paragraph of that story and you’ll find I cite Blogger Buzz as my source. This information came straight from there and no where near Riley’s site.
Let me ask this question, is reporting on a product from a major company with their own website about the topic somehow “idea theft,� as Mr. Riley continues to call it? How is it then, that my story about USB keys, where I link to the original sources an example of that? True, I didn’t invent USB keys. I’m not an engineer. Guess he got me.
Geek Discovers Girls: widely reported across the net all citing the same source I did, Shanghai Daily. Do I read Chinese? No. But this seemed to be the original source.
As for the assertion regarding a contributing writer (thief, again) “built an entire site republishing such articles, and even ‘contributes’ to WebProNews. Please bear in mind that when you run a site like ours and publishes submitted articles, we maintain that any content submitted from outside is the sole responsibility of the submitting author. Though we do take steps to insure they are legitimate, sometimes it is a similar scenario to the “chicken and egg� debate. If we find any author to be unreliable in this way, they are not allowed back into WebProNews for publication.
Mr. Riley’s accusations seem mean-spirited, unfounded, publicity-houndish, mountains from molehills in nature, unsupportable, easily contradicted, not rooted in logic, and seem to convey the message that the world of news is his exclusive property. But here’s some news for you, it’s not.
I hope this clears things up.
Sincerely,
Jason Lee Miller, A Thief If You Say So
Comment by Jason Lee Miller — September 12, 2005 @ 12:42 pm