Murdoch Media Busted Stealing Blog Content

By Darryl Mason

You may recall Rupert Murdoch, and his minions, recent spectacular fury at "plagiarist" bloggers, search engines and aggregators "stealing" Murdoch news empire's content and then republishing it on their own websites without Murdoch's permission, and without payment.

Here's a reminder of Murdoch's words :

"The aggregators and plagiarists will soon have to pay a price for the co-opting of our content. ...it will be the content creators who will pay the ultimate price and the content kleptomaniacs who triumph..."

And here's an excerpt from one of the dozens of recent 'Rupert Says You Will Pay' stories printed in The London Times, owned by Rupert Murdoch :

Rupert Murdoch opened a new front in his battle to obtain “fair compensation” for content produced by his media companies...

The move follows Mr Murdoch’s repeated calls over the past few months for content providers to charge online distributors and his insistence that media companies cannot continue to produce quality content for free. He has accused Google and other search engines of being “content kleptomaniacs” for taking other people’s content....

Imagine cutting and pasting someone else's work into your own blog or news site, passing it off as your own property, failing to acknowledge where the content was sourced from, and not paying the original author or creator for its use?

What sort of low-life content kleptomaniac wannabe-journalist cuntbags would do such a thing?

Well, the London Times would, and just did.

Movie director Edgar Wright (Shaun Of The Dead, HotFuzz, the brilliant TV series Spaced) wrote a beautiful, thoughtful ode to actor Edward Woodward on his blog earlier this week, and then today discovered his Woodward piece had been brutally re-edited and then published on the London Times website, and also in the print edition. Without his permission. Without linking to his blog. Without payment.

Edgar Wright on Twitter :

Is it appropriate for a national newspaper to reprint my personal tribute to Edward Woodward as if it were an article written for them?

They just lifted it from my blog without asking. And cut off the entire end section about my last meeting with him.

That is the part that bothers me the most. That they edited out the last time I saw him. My last remembrance of him.

They did not credit the source, link back to the original content or edit it down well. Their version makes me look unfeeling

I took great care in writing my tribute. I didn't ask some writer with a deadline to copy it and gut it of all feeling.

Perhaps they would like to send the fee they would pay the commissioned writer of such an article to Edward's memorial

Let's hope so.

Edgar Wright (Uncut) On Edward Woodward


UPDATE : So what did The Times do once Edgar Wright contacted them and asked what the hell they thought they were doing?

They published a reluctant, vague clarification, which doesn't say anything about the fact The Times stole content off Edgar Wright's blog and reproduced it at their website, and in print, without Wright's permission and without payment :

We have been asked to make clear that Edgar Wright's appreciation of Edward Woodward, which appeared in the paper on Tuesday, November 17, was abridged and the full version can be read here or at www.edgarwrighthere.com/2009/11/edward-woodward-1930-2009/

For the moment, the link back to Edgar Wright's blog leads to a fail page.

Incredible.

UPDATE : The final word on this fiasco from Edgar Wright :

At my request, The Times are making a donation to a charity of Edward Woodward's family's choosing. So that's something.

No apology, though. Or acknowledgement of the theft.


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