[Shrek] Go get 'em Joe!

There is nothing worse to a writer than to see your work stolen by someone else.

Now I'm not talking about someone "borrowing" your words and then giving you credit, because there isn't much cooler than that. I'm talking about people just out and out stealing your words and then claiming they are their own. It's happened to me on the hockey and sports blogs I contribute to, and I've had message board posts "stolen" and added to newspaper/blog stories without credit being given.

Each time it's happened I've gone after the people responsible to get the credit I felt I deserved. The vast majority of time it just takes one e-mail and all is resolved, but occasionally it takes what would seem to be more effort than it's worth. But I do it anyway.

Now I don't know who "Joe" is, other than he's the writer that owns a site called Backyard-Hockey.com. It's a nice little site with lots of good stories that he obviously takes a lot of time preparing, and I read it whenever there's a new post.

So I was pretty disgusted when there was a post on backyard-hockey saying the Manchester Union Leader plagiarized one of backyard-hockey's stories. Now it did turn out that one e-mail set everything mostly straight, but it still amazes me that someone could be dumb enough to take content from a niche site and think that anyone interested in reading the information wouldn't recognize the information as coming from a blog dedicated to that topic. It also amazes me they offered no apology.

So, on behalf of the Union Leader, allow me to apologize to Joe...I'm sorry there are lazy writers that try to steal the content and hard work of others, and I'm sorry that what was once a proud newspaper but is now a shell of its former self couldn't say the words "we apologize" to you.