Arrington : "You’re Welcome, You Bastards" • Hacker News Board

Re: Arrington : "You’re Welcome, You Bastards"

#61

Post by devinj » Thu, May 13, 2010, 9:58 PM UTC

sjsivak wrote: post #29

acqq wrote: post #23

Arrington is clearly wrong. It's clear that nobody told him to copy paste the whole content, or gave him the permission. He just trolls now for more hits. But he'd just lose if he'd come to court.

Maybe I misread the article, but it looks like the Fortune PR person never, ever states that TechCrunch is only supposed to post portions of the excerpts. This is the closest I could find: > And if you don’t mind, once you’ve read the excerpts, please let me know if you choose not to post on one and not the other or both, which of course we would love. Now, IANAL but nowhere in there does it say to not post the excer…

Copyright is reserved unless explicitly given. That is, what you have said may be perfectly true, and Arrington could still be in the wrong. All they have to have done is to not give him explicit permission.

Re: Arrington : "You’re Welcome, You Bastards"

#62

Post by danudey » Thu, May 13, 2010, 10:02 PM UTC

ig1 wrote: post #58

neilc wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fortune is jerking him around. I don't see how: at least in the emails posted, Fortune never authorizes Arrington to post the full excerpt: they talk about writing a post "on the book excerpts". In any case, I think it is more likely to be a simple miscommunication. It would be more mature for Arrington to simply concede that -- the excerpts are their copyrighted material, and they have the right to control its distr…

Why is neilc's post getting downvoted ? - it seems a perfectly valid contribution to the discussion.

On the one hand, yes, he has a valid point, but I'd guess the downvotes are from people who feel that being unclear in your communication, then calling repeatedly over and over to have you take down a post full of glowing praise and preorder links on a hugely popular blog, then, when you refuse to edit what is probably the best PR the book's had so far, threatening to sue you to have you take it down.

Fortune could have said 'Sorry, we miscommunicated, could you trim down your excerpts? Here are some example quotes you might want to include instead.' They could have called him, and when they didn't get an answer, e-mailed him instead. They could have asked nicely, or even looked on the bright side of this amazing PR. Instead, they're being the biggest assholes they can be.

So yeah, there's a point to be made there, but I think Fortune's dickery is overshadowing it.

Re: Arrington : "You’re Welcome, You Bastards"

#63

Post by neilc » Thu, May 13, 2010, 10:02 PM UTC

AmberShah wrote: post #46

gte910h wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, I think you're wrong on both accounts. Fortune is jerking him around. Calling them on it is not a bad thing, because a working relationship on those terms will likely cost more than it will benefit. Additionally, bloggers (and others in Attention Media) often make more from douchebaggery than from evenhandedness. (And I honestly don't think Arrington is being a douche here.

I don't see how: at least in the emails posted, Fortune never authorizes Arrington to post the full excerpt: they talk about writing a post "on the book excerpts". He DID publish a book excerpt. Based on the way they kept saying full content, they want to make it sound like he published the entire book or something. They asked if he would publish excerpts. They sent him excerpts. He published excerpts. He followed th…

They asked if he would publish excerpts.

Except they didn't, at least not in any publicly-posted email that I can see. In fact, they describe the excerpt as "exclusive" to Fortune -- they asked Arrington to post "on the book excerpts", not "to post the book excerpts". As I said, a miscommunication -- and there is a simple, mature way to handle that.

Re: Arrington : "You’re Welcome, You Bastards"

#64

Post by dkarl » Thu, May 13, 2010, 10:05 PM UTC

greyman wrote: post #45

gte910h wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I agree, they're trying to jerk Arrington around here. Now fortune may have not had rights to let Arrington post it, but that's their issue most likely, as they misrepresented it, not Arrington The first emails from them clearly are talking about excerpts in their entirety.

Hard to say...they wrote to "post on excerpts", but not "post excerpts". But obviously, what would Mike gain by only posting excerpt of the excerpt? Anyone can do that without asking permission from Fortune, it's just normal blogging practice. Now when I think about it, Fortune looks even more ridiculous in my eyes. They basically asked TC to blog about their promotional article for free. ;-)

I agree; to me, the email says that the post would be about the excerpts, and the excerpts themselves were provided simply because they weren't live on the Fortune site yet. The email quotes in the post do NOT say he is going to post the excerpts. In fact, referring to Fortune's "exclusive excerpts" clearly implies that they'll only be available on Fortune's site, i.e., not on Techcrunch.

He simply misread the emails. With the benefit of hindsight, he should see that they don't confirm his side of the story, which makes the blog post seem... weird. (Usually when you read just one guy's side of an issue, you don't come out of it thinking he's probably wrong.) At best, they're ambiguous. I think the natural reading favors Fortune, and I would say that if they're the best evidence he has, and he posted the excerpts based on these emails, then he's clearly wrong. But maybe he was misled by other communication.

Re: Arrington : "You’re Welcome, You Bastards"

#65

Post by danudey » Thu, May 13, 2010, 10:06 PM UTC

rbanffy wrote: post #56

stanleydrew wrote: post #6

Reminds me of the kinds of posts we saw after the whole CrunchPad/JooJoo thing fell apart.

Those were ugly in comparison. And also ruined what could have been a very nice tablet platform.

A lack of quality control certainly didn't help.

Re: Arrington : "You’re Welcome, You Bastards"

#66

Post by smallblacksun » Thu, May 13, 2010, 10:16 PM UTC

huntero wrote: post #50

"I’d love to chat with you about FORTUNE’s exclusive excerpt of David Kirkpatrick’s book on Facebook" "note that the story stems from an exclusive excerpt in FORTUNE of David Kirkpatrick’s new book The Facebook Effect." "once you’ve read the excerpts, please let me know if you choose not to post on one and not the other or both" The use of the words "exclusive" and "on" seem to make it pretty clear that he was suppos…

Yeah. I think Arrington misunderstood what they asked him to do (which is fine), and then flipped out when they tried to correct his misunderstanding (which isn't).

Re: Arrington : "You’re Welcome, You Bastards"

#67

Post by smallblacksun » Thu, May 13, 2010, 10:18 PM UTC

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #60

Lazlo_Nibble wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also repeatedly refer to the excerpt(s) as "FORTUNE's exclusive". It's not an "exclusive excerpt" if TechCrunch is republishing it in its entirety, which makes it extremely unlikely that FORTUNE believed it was offering to let Arrington do so. And I find it really, really hard to believe that Arrington wouldn't have realized this before agreeing to anything.

The excerpts were Fortune's exclusive because they got to print them first and TechCrunch to post later, marking Fortune as the originators of the scoop.

The Fortune PR person explicitly asked him to have his posts about the excepts put up at the same time as the actual excerpts on the Fortune site.

Re: Arrington : "You’re Welcome, You Bastards"

#68

Post by mikecane » Thu, May 13, 2010, 10:19 PM UTC

That Simon & Schuster got involved says something. Fortune probably paid to run the excerpt -- a subsidiary right in the original book contract -- and then goofed in asking for free pimping from Arrington in the manner that they did. In other words, from the publisher's point of view, Arrington was getting a free ride that S&S believed he should have paid for. Fortune's mistake.

Re: Arrington : "You’re Welcome, You Bastards"

#69

Post by aarongough » Thu, May 13, 2010, 10:19 PM UTC

cglee wrote: post #51

billclerico wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a better technique would probably have been to apologize to techcrunch for telling them the wrong thing, and then asking to take it down. as opposed to telling arrington that he misunderstood.

I've met so many of these management types who come in during the middle of a crisis and just demand things be fixed. Those are the worst, and one of my coworkers termed it "pigeon management" - they fly in, shit all over the place, and then fly away. Roth sounds like he pigeon managed the situation (from this one-sided account).

I laughed pretty hard when I read the definition you gave for 'pigeon management'. That's one of those phrases that perfectly sums up what can otherwise be difficult to explain..

Re: Arrington : "You’re Welcome, You Bastards"

#70

Post by megablast » Thu, May 13, 2010, 10:26 PM UTC

greyman wrote: post #45

gte910h wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I agree, they're trying to jerk Arrington around here. Now fortune may have not had rights to let Arrington post it, but that's their issue most likely, as they misrepresented it, not Arrington The first emails from them clearly are talking about excerpts in their entirety.

Hard to say...they wrote to "post on excerpts", but not "post excerpts". But obviously, what would Mike gain by only posting excerpt of the excerpt? Anyone can do that without asking permission from Fortune, it's just normal blogging practice. Now when I think about it, Fortune looks even more ridiculous in my eyes. They basically asked TC to blog about their promotional article for free. ;-)

The advantage Michael got was that he got early access to the excerpts, so he could write about them and link to fortune, before anyone else. This is the standard way things work.

But I love Michaels repsonse, good on him. Unless they explicitly say, DO NOT USE THE ENTIRE EXCERPT, go for it. I mean, fortune and the author sent thank you emails just after they were posted, either they did not read it properly, or they were not clear themselves on the licensing situation.

It looks to me like the contact at fortune made the mistake, didn't check properly, and is trying to lay the blame on techcrunch. This is also, the standard way things work.