When newspapers go bad
Manchester United blog The Stretty Rant suffered the worst scourge of Internet publishing this week: copyright theft. The United blog published world exclusive pictures of the new kit for next season – a retro number that has a distinct ‘Marmite’ appeal to it – only to find other sites and national newspapers blatantly ripping it off.
Unsurprising though as in blog publishing the better the content the more frequently somebody else will choose to steal it. Indeed, Scotland on Sunday, the national weekend newspaper north of the border, once copied a Rant article verbatim with their own byline. The formal complaint dismissed with a curt ‘so sue’ response.
Then today – three days after Stretty Rant’s exclusive – The Sun (above) uses the same pictures to boldly claim their own exclusive. Both late and very naughty boys.
Worse still, BBC Online today links to The Sun’s story, without so much as a cursory credit to the original publisher.
It is perhaps ironic then that The Times‘ Oliver Kay should use his blog column this week to lambaste websites for spreading rumours.
The Times is of course part of the same Rupert Murdoch-owned News International group that also includes both The Sun and News of the World – the paper that lost the daddy of all privacy suits in 2008 for erroneously publishing a story about Max Moseley and Nazi-style sex parties. Rumours indeed.
For those interested in the new kit here’s the home and away colours for next season. Rant will not fund the Glazers of course; we’ve already got Steve Coppell’s from 1980 in any case. 15 sizes too small perhaps. The diet starts tomorrow…