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Arrington : "You’re Welcome, You Bastards"

techcrunch.com

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

#51

Post by cglee »

billclerico wrote: post #30
nopal wrote: post #9

This sounds like someone at Fortune trying to do something industrious and then getting smacked by the higher-ups. I wonder how many good ideas are quashed simply because of policy.

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).

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

#52

Post by Lazlo_Nibble »

iron_ball wrote: post #28
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.

They did say "post on" the excerpts instead of "post" the excerpts. That's a syntactic nicety which must have gone unnoticed by Arrington, but which was presumably clear in the mind of the Fortune rep.

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.

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

#53

Post by danh »

edw519 wrote: post #27
swombat wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a nice anecdote, but apart from the slanted attack on Michael Arrington (which is obviously proving popular, looking at how many upvotes you got), I'm not sure what it's got to do with the article at hand. Michael Arrington might act like a douche sometimes (maybe even lots of the time), but that's no reason not to treat this story on its merits, rather than responding with a cute character attack.

slanted attack on Michael Arrington cute character attack Not an attack, just an observation. And not of his character (which I am hardly qualified to judge), just of his behavior in this particular post. I dunno, posting word for word emails from someone else in a blog just seems a little over the top to me, regardless of the reason. I don't know the merits of this case, nor do I care. The antecdote was to make a po…

Thank you for introducing me to "antecdote". Brilliant word!

I suppose it is half anecdote, half antidote, which must be highly useful. Or is it maybe an ante-anecdote, an amusing story in advance (a.k.a. prophecy)?

Not surprisingly, such a useful word is in widespread use, apparently. 33,200 uses to be exact, according to Google. But no clear definition, according to antecdotal evidence.

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

#54

Post by rbanffy »

edw519 wrote: post #18

I once had a friend who never forgot a birthday or holiday. I always got a card from him. The problem was that it was always a card that someone else had sent him . He scribbled over their message and wrote his own, then added a lame message, "I'm doing my part by recycling." This went on for years and I hated it. It wasn't funny anymore and I didn't want to read what others had written to him. Then it hit me... Who…

> I will probably never send him an email because I don't want anyone else (much less the whole world) reading it.

I am sure he can differentiate between a personal e-mail and one sent because of your work.

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

#55

Post by rbanffy »

moxiemk1 wrote: post #32
natrius wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They threatened legal action. Posting emails doesn't seem like an unethical move after the other side has initiated hostilities.

Exactly. They've said the alternatives are lawsuit or go with their "altered" deal. He picked lawsuit. Since we're now going to a lawsuit, these emails are going to be exhibits in court => public knowledge.

> these emails are going to be exhibits in court

And by showing how poor they case would be, hopefully avoiding expensive hostilities.

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

#57

Post by jjs »

misuba wrote: post #44

Reprints are contractual matters. Draw one up. This goes double if you're calling yourself a publisher and you're working with major print entities.

Reprints are contractual matters. Draw one up.

Email is wonderful because people don't understand that an agreement in writing doesn't have to mean ink on paper.

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

#58

Post by ig1 »

neilc wrote: post #40
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.

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.

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

#60

Post by pbhjpbhj »

Lazlo_Nibble wrote: post #52
iron_ball wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They did say "post on" the excerpts instead of "post" the excerpts. That's a syntactic nicety which must have gone unnoticed by Arrington, but which was presumably clear in the mind of the Fortune rep.

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.
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