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Email to a Content Thief

Posted on December 24, 2007
Filed Under Uncategorized | 9 Comments

JC Penney Post Screenshot

I need to help get the message out there that Johnny Virgil of 15 Minute Lunch is the genius behind the now-famous JC Penney catalog post. He wrote it. If you see it anywhere else, the content has been stolen. It’s been pushed to the front of my mind again, because I saw a stolen version of his post on the StumbleUpon Humor Buzz page.

On the page that was benefiting from Johnny’s work, there was no indication at all that it was anything other than the author’s own work. I already know that there are several versions floating around the internet, which is partly the nature of having a post go viral on the level that the JC Penney post did.

Many of these copies are probably posted by people who are not too savvy in the ways of online publishing. This is clearly not the case in this particular circumstance, so I was prompted to send the following email to the webmaster.

— (begin email)

You Have Published Stolen Content!

I was disturbed to see the 1977 JC Penney catalog post on the Stumble Upon buzz page led to your site. I know the author of the original post. He uses the name Johnny Virgil and his blog is called 15 Minute Lunch.

(I provided a URL to the Original post here)

He is the original author of the material you have posted, failed to attribute properly, and passed off as your own under the terms of a supposed “All Material Copyright Jeff Rense ©1997-2007, Unless Otherwise Indicated.”

I do realize that Johnny’s post went viral. I understand it can become difficult to keep track of the source of such things, which is why you shouldn’t post content that originates in an email forward. Even still, there is not even an indication of email being the source. It’s merely passed off as original content, “Copyright Jeff Rense.”

There is not one single indicator that the content you have posted originates from another source. It is not being used for educational value, criticism, or any other manner in the spirit of “Fair Use.” There is not even the required attribution that would be in keeping with a GPL, or many Creative Commons licenses.

Under no circumstance, that I can fathom, have you been ethically sound in your publishing of this stolen content. It most certainly is NOT in keeping with the Creative Commons License that Johnny publishes under.

You are free:

  • to Share — to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work

Under the following conditions:

  • Attribution. You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).
  • Noncommercial. You may not use this work for commercial purposes.
  • No Derivative Works. You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work.
  • For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work. The best way to do this is with a link to this web page.
  • Any of the above conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder.
  • Nothing in this license impairs or restricts the author’s moral rights.

I have no idea what kind of content you are posting on the rest of the site, as I have no interest in providing you with more pageviews than I already have. I’ll simply assume that your standard operating procedure is to benefit, via ads, from the work of other people. I find it laughable that you ask for donations for scraping the internet and stealing content.

You have no integrity. “Your First Source For Reality & Honest Journalism” indeed. Now that’s comedy.

~Fiar
http://humorblogging.com/
http://radioactiveliberty.com/
—(end email)

We can learn from this, though.

Following these guidelines, we can help maintain the integrity of the internet, and give credit where credit is due.

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Comments

9 Responses to “Email to a Content Thief”

  1. Pete Moss on December 24th, 2007 1:43 pm

    Just Stop Already

    You should not be so protective
    Of every little thing you write
    Some of it is out of sight
    Some of it is not quite right.

    If you always act that way
    No one with you wants to play
    Oh come on it’s no big deal
    Lighten up and get more real.

    Copyright (C) by Peter Moss
    All Rights Reserved
    First Printing is on my Word doc
    So I have proof I wrote this.

  2. RT on December 24th, 2007 3:02 pm

    Why would someone want to be so weak as to pass off someone else’s work as his or her own?

    It takes little effort to attribute where you got something.

  3. Fiar on December 24th, 2007 3:38 pm

    Pete If you read the whole thing, you will see that I only took issue because of the righteous indignation of strict copyright that Jeff Rense advances, coupled with his tagline, “Your First Source For Reality & Honest Journalism.”

    Really all he’s doing is aggregating news from other sources. Yet he is indignant in wanting to claim ownership.

    If you look at my site, you will see that I distribute under a CC license, that is easily visible when filling in the comments box. All I ask is attribution. Gasp! Oh, how I obsess over “protecting” my content.

    I even acknowledged that attribution becomes more difficult when a post goes so wildly viral, like Johnny’s post did.

    If not for Jeff Rense’s tone of making such a point of declaring the content of his site is “Mine, mine, all mine,” I never would have even bothered.

    If anything, it is Rense that you should be chastising.

    RT Exactly. A link. Oh, the pain.

  4. Chris on December 25th, 2007 12:53 pm

    I never knew there were that many hack blogs that take forwarded email and turn them into posts.

  5. Fiar on December 26th, 2007 10:13 am

    Oh yeah. They’re everywhere, Chris

  6. Chris on December 26th, 2007 9:53 pm

    hey Pete is it 4:20 yet? Do another bong rip buddy.

  7. Fiar on December 27th, 2007 4:30 pm

    *cough* what?

  8. the frogster on January 1st, 2008 11:52 am

    I agree with you completely, FIAR. Well said.

    It’s always 4:20 somewhere. Ish.

  9. Johnny Virgil on February 9th, 2008 1:31 pm

    Hey, thanks for doing that. I also sent him a note telling him where that came from, but he/it/they never responded.

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