Comments on: An Apology to Our Readers and Our Peers

By: David Bell

David Bell — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 11:59:12 +0000

Enjoy reading your articles, this kind of post just gives me more confidence in your content. Thanks for letting us know. BTW, enjoyed reading that post – pity he didn’t credit the original.

By: keith bohanna

keith bohanna — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 07:04:34 +0000

Refreshing post, thank you.

keith

By: Brian Carnell

Brian Carnell — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 15:42:34 +0000

I guess Leah and Brandon are looking at a different version in their feed than I am. The one that appeared on WWD and then was deleted is clearly just a rewrite of the MakingUseOf post with new screenshots. Would it be actionable plagiarism? Probably not. Was it unethical? Absolutely.

By: Aibek

Aibek — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 06:07:58 +0000

Good call guys

By: Rich Pearson

Rich Pearson — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 16:28:15 +0000

@shmooth Attributor does provide an originality checking service for publishers that rely on UGC submissions or multiple authors within their network.

The other side of the business enables publishers to analyze where their content appears across the Internet and monetize either directly through licensing or indirectly through obtaining links and the downstream boost in search engine ranking. As a last resort, you can also send takedowns, removing the page entirely and/or from the search engine indices.

By: Dan Sargent

Dan Sargent — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 14:26:28 +0000

“Leah & Brandon might be right, but the ethical lapse is a lack of attribution. If it’s inspiration, it should be sourced. if the author linked ethically, the problem would reveal itself or be resolved.”

Exactly! In a former life (pre-entrepreneur), I was a member of the Dept. of Liberal Arts & International Studies at the Colorado School of Mines (http://lais.mines.edu/) and David is right on track with the ethics, and legality, of the issue.

Leah and Brandon et. al. will want to brush up on these issues ASAP, if they want to continue being independent contractors… Violating professional standards hurts not only your own career, but the companies who syndicate your work as well (and THEY are happy to blacklist you among all their contacts — say goodbye to more than just a reference, in that case).

Kudos to WWD & GigaOm on making a clean admission, and a clean break from the writer.

And yes, the Net would be a much better place if such professionalism were the norm, rather than the exception…

By: Aardvark

Aardvark — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 13:01:50 +0000

If all bloggers were held to these standards we’d have . . . very few bloggers.

By: shmooth

shmooth — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 08:01:50 +0000

yep – lifted.

By: shmooth

shmooth — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 07:56:07 +0000

well, here’s to hoping the original pops up in my feed reader.

in the future, will feed readers have an Outlook-like ‘unsend’ button? and then you’d get a big, fat ‘DELETED’ message in your feed. sweet! :D

back to attribution and all that – what the heck happened with all that? wasn’t attributor and some other companies actually supposed to do something about this? dang.

By: Josh

Josh — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 02:02:19 +0000

Good call guys!

Great to see a response like this… nothing more frustrating then seeing your work ripped off