Report Stolen Content Here

[DonRocks]

Everyone deserves a clean slate to start with, but the original content that our members have taken their time and effort to produce has been stolen hundreds, if not thousands, of times over the years, without any attribution. From this point forward, I'd appreciate it if people would use this thread to bring these transgressions to light.

Cheers,

Rocks

[RWBooneJr]

I can think of at least one local source for food news that gives credit where credit is due.  We try, anyway.

[DonRocks]

I can think of at least one local source for food news that gives credit where credit is due.  We try, anyway.

Yes you do try, and it has always been much appreciated, Satan - it isn't very hard to find the original source of a news item (anyone can do it in about 60 seconds - it's simply a matter of deciding whether or not to put ethics above laziness or personal gain). I'm not going to be actively participating on this thread because I don't wish to patrol the internet, and I want to stay above this nonsense, but I do hope our readers will point out whenever they see blatant acts of theft or gross negligence occurring. Indeed, it is an ongoing issue, easily glossed over by the offending publication, and with no signs of abatement.

As always, I ask that our readers point out if we ever missy a citation. It happens. Just last week, for example, I thought we'd broken a story when, in fact, I found out on my own that PoPville had broken it several hours before. I corrected everything, and followed it up proactively with a letter.

[SeanMike]

As for stolen material: when we were active with the CSOWG, we had our lawyer give us a form letter to send to people who had stolen content from our members' sites. If someone stole something, we just popped off the official letter to them (on his letterhead) and boom, it was almost always quickly resolved.

Our lawyer from that time (my brother) is now working elsewhere and our LLC has pretty much dissolved, but given the legal support we have on this board if there's interest in something like that it might be worth considering.

(In the CSOWG case, it was often stealing entire posts whole hog, including images. Smaller "snippets" etc. would be harder to deal with, obviously.)

[DaveO]

As for stolen material: when we were active with the CSOWG, we had our lawyer give us a form letter to send to people who had stolen content from our members' sites. If someone stole something, we just popped off the official letter to them (on his letterhead) and boom, it was almost always quickly resolved.

Our lawyer from that time (my brother) is now working elsewhere and our LLC has pretty much dissolved, but given the legal support we have on this board if there's interest in something like that it might be worth considering.

(In the CSOWG case, it was often stealing entire posts whole hog, including images. Smaller "snippets" etc. would be harder to deal with, obviously.)

Content is copied and stolen all over the web.  Its everywhere.

What SeanMike's group did is exactly an appropriate action.  It works a lot.

 You can take some subsequent actions.  If one keeps pursuing it one can contact host's of sites that steal info, send the host a letter that describes the theft and the appropriate language, and work to get the host to take down the site.

oooohhhh....that last step really hurts the thieves.

[DonRocks]

Content is copied and stolen all over the web.  Its everywhere.  

Correct.

I broke the news about Paul Pelt leaving Tabard Inn at 9:16 AM on March 31st, via my confidential source who worked at Tabard. I apologize to Chef Pelt for the typo in this 9:18 AM March 31st Tweet (there are few things more embarrassing than misspelling someone's name).

Here is a Washington Post blog piece from 5:08 PM on March 31st, expounding upon the same story without any citation. The Post didn't claim to have broken the news, so they didn't lie about anything, although there is a misleading statement in the piece which led to a flat-out error in the following piece:

Here's an April 1st Washington Business Journal piece citing the Washington Post story. See how this process works, and how important proper citation is to the *original* journalist who broke the story?

For over ten years, I have established relationships with dozens of sources who confide in me because they know I won't violate their confidence. I strongly suspect that even today, April 5th, this story might not be in the media had I not broken the news.

If our readers would be on the lookout for news items that our community breaks, and post about them - on *the other websites* instead of here, please - I would very much appreciate it so I don't have to involve myself. This is not what I want to be spending my time on, but I'm not going to roll over and play dead, either. I'm certainly not on any type of hunt, but when questionable situations are brought to my attention, I will continue to methodically mention them. If the past ten years are any indication of the future, it won't take long for you to see how this game is played - our website is the exception, in that we encourage our members to make an extra effort to find the original source (which often takes less than one minute), and give them proper credit for their work.