cross-posted from Progressive Junction
Here is a screen capture of Decider's review of a Chicago area music event:
It's a decent review, if you care to read it, and by posting it here in full, I basically plagiarized it, even though I sourced it with a link at the top. But I'm not the only one:
I'm curious why HuffPo felt the need to put a link at the bottom to "the whole story".
Nowadays, if you go to the page where that HuffPo screen capture was taken, you will see that they know how to use the cut function in addition to copy and paste.
I first came across this story on the Chicago Reader blog, where the author took several screen captures of Huffington Post literally stealing entire articles, posting them, and then putting a link at the bottom that ironically says "read the full story". From Chicago Reader:
What bothers me is that it was done without our permission. Full stop. Perhaps there's no damage to the Reader--perhaps we even benefit--but it really, really bothers me that someone copied entire concert previews
I'm not a copyright expert, but I do understand the basics, and if you notice on my site I got myself one of those nifty free licenses from Creative Commons. There is no doubt in my mind that lifting entire articles or literature and commercializing it on your own site is pure unadulterated plagiarism. Here is a quick video from Creative Commons that describes the basics and the future of copyright -
Now, I don't necessarily have a problem with HuffPo's current version of the screen captured page above, or the plethora of other examples posted on Chicago Reader, since they obviously realized that they crossed the line and changed their pages. No, what I have a problem with is their repeated journalistic depravities, that they crossed that line in the first place. There is a pattern at Huffington Post. Take for example this Yahoo article which actually explicitly says it is linking to the photographer's site, but it is linking to HuffPo who is then linking to the photographer's site. And this is done with the most popular photograph of Obama taken in Hawai'i. Why?
And need I remind you of A Siegel's recent recommended diary which chronicles HuffPo's blatant descent into Inhofe territory with blatant misleading statements regarding global warming? It is yet another example of the sacrificing of journalistic integrity.
I don't know about you, but I care about the integrity of the journalists that provide my news. That is precisely the reason I don't get my news from Fox, and now Huffington Post.