The normally even-tempered Dr. O of MedGadget and his fellow bloggers have been reporting on the republication of bloggers’ work in major newspapers, bandwidth theft, etc., and he’s ticked-off about it:
Our website Medgadget.com (usually a quiet place to learn about the latest medical technologies) has been investigating a new service from Pluck, called BlogBurst. We have learned and revealed a number of questionable practices by the company – from republishing entire contents of bloggers on newspaper sites to deeplinking images from bloggers and innocent bystander websites. The most outrageous thing is that some of the nations’ leading newspapers, including the San Francisco Chronicle, Houston Chronicle, San Antonio Express-News, and the Austin American-Statesman, are engaged in the deeplinking and republishing for profit.
Please spread the message! It is time for us, bloggers, to say that we value and respect our work.
I value their work, too. I didn’t sign up for Pluck (and I don’t have the kind of content they’d find useful, anyway), and now I’m glad I didn’t. There’s a lot on the practice, at their site.
