The editor's response reveals a lot about her understanding (or lack thereof) of the business she's in. Normally I'm willing to overlook small typos in blog posts -- but when you are an editor, and you are writing an important response on an important issue, it's not wise to get the punctuation wrong on the very first word. (It should be "it's sad", not "its sad".)
That she continues not to use apostrophes throughout the post and gets other things wrong ("I never ment to hurt"), pretty much sends the message that "I don't really know what I'm doing" and "I just don't really care." If, as an editor, she doesn't understand basic rules of punctuation, then is it any surprise that she doesn't understand copyright?
If, as she claims, the magazine is going to go out of business, the real culprit is the editor's lack of knowledge about the business she's in.
After all, we wouldn't feel sorry for a chef who had to close his restaurant after it was revealed that he was violating health codes. Why should we feel sorry for an editor who still doesn't understand copyright, even after having gone through this whole episode?
I couldn't agree more that this editor's fate is deserved and that this is an "apology" only in the traditional meaning of that word (an attempted defense and not a mea culpa), and a poor one at that. I also have been critical of her unbelievably tone-deaf approach to the subject of handling the complaint of an innocent person whom she had wronged (see http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1870300).
Yet, at some level, I do feel sorry for this person in a sense that I can best describe through an anecdote.
I once had to fire one of my employees (an attorney) who had been with me no more than a few weeks and who produced atrociously bad work when measured by the standards that apply to legal work in the startup area (which must technically meet high standards or else). This employee was a very nice person but, as I saw her work in various contexts, I realized that she was basically in way over her head. The details are not important, except to note the following: as I was explaining the reasons for having to fire her, she had this astonished look in her eyes, as if, all through her schooling and prior work experiences, no one had ever been straight with her about her shortcomings. In essence, she truly didn't have what it took ever to be good in this field (I did not put it to her that bluntly, of course). As I talked with her and tried to encourage her in any way I could about her future, I was literally grieved to realize that this young lady had essentially been coddled all the way through the school system in a way that left her to hit a cold wall of reality only after having likely wasted all kinds of time and money in pursuing a career for which she was not at all suited. This was one of the saddest encounters I have ever had. Though I was the one who had been short-changed in the relationship, and hurt financially owing to incompetent work, I could not help but feel profoundly sorry for that young lady.
I would say that this editor too is a sadly misplaced person for her chosen field and that this whole episode has essentially exposed that fact in a very public way. There is something quite tragic in all this, even as it is hard to sympathize either with her position taken in this fiasco or with her clumsy (and unwise) attempts to defend the indefensible. Above all, this must have been a severe embarrassment and humiliation for this editor, whether or not deserved, and at a human level I am truly sorry for her.
It reminds me of fixed mindset people, which Ron Burk describes in this 5-minute Ignite presentation, The Psychology of Incompetence:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_vcy7I0zIM
* Over-estimate their own abilities
* Hide, minimize, and blame away failures
* Solutions shouldn't require hard work (effort is for less talented folks)
I had a reply filled with disbelief about the ability to successfully cheat through law school, but after reading that article I'm truly blown away.
It's beyond pitiful - in the literal, not pejorative sense - how many people manage to get through our so-called higher education without so much as the ability to communicate on a sixth-grade level. I guess all I can do is teach my kids the value of what it means to love learning, and how to communicate their thoughts and ideas well. The system obviously hasn't figured out how to make that happen yet.
But if they couldn't do the work in school (needing to turn to someone else to do their assignments), then why would they be flabbergasted that they couldn't do the work on their own outside of school?
You, as always, make good points. I have great sympathy for the editor on a human level, and I too have wound up in over my head in the past.
And yet, it is far better for a failing business to be forced to close and for someone that cannot handle the job to be removed from the position than for them to continue to be coddled by employers or society.
I must respectfully disagree with one statement you made though. You said, "she truly didn't have what it took ever to be good in this field". Clearly, I have not met this lady, but I am a great believer in people's ability to change. Perhaps success in the field would have required that she learn more, work harder, and perhaps even alter her personality, but I suspect all of those things would have been possible if she truly wanted it. Such drastic changes are likely rare, but they can be done.
Sounds like you handled it as well as possible. I remember one time had to let someone go that I'd recruited away from another pretty decent job - that was one of the most gut-wrenching things I've had to do in business.
I actually kept him on and let it drag out three months without him producing anything because I couldn't get up the nerve to face the fact I'd made a mistake. Not just a mistake, but a mistake that would screw someone else's life up that I respected and liked.
It all worked out well - he's becoming a doctor at one of the top English schools now, so I wish I'd done it earlier so he could have gotten on with his life, and I'd have had a lot less stress and my business would have done better. Wavering on it made him dead man walking for three months, and cost me personally $10,000+, more if you count opportunity cost, much more if you count stress. So I gotta say you handled that the best possible way, even though that situation is always hard and always sucks. Someone who hasn't managed people probably can't understand how hard it is to let someone go and do it decently. Sounds like you did right by her in the best way for that situation.
She also could have taken the negative and turned it around. If a restaurant gets closed for violating health codes (which is not usually permanent, from my understanding), that's a perfect time to put big glass windows on the kitchen, issue a sincere mea culpa, and say "look guys, we learned our lesson and are the cleanest restaurant in town now!". It worked for Jack in the Box after the e. coli scare.
While this obviously created a huge furor, I'd say at least 100x more people know about Cooks Source than did before. Instead of figuring out a way to relaunch the site, she basically committed suicide with a "they'll be sorry when I'm gone", poor-me kind of letter.
This is especially insightful. To the talented marketer, there is no such thing as bad press. Being thrust into the limelight to be mocked and laughed at is a really great opportunity to take one on the chin and own up to your mistakes, and then to turn that around into positive press about how you screwed up and how you're fixing it moving forward. Cook's Source has visibility easily several orders of magnitude greater than it did before this whole debacle, and all you need is to convert a small number of those to your product to make some mighty tasty lemonade out of those lemons.
Instead, the editor took the opportunity to further expose the traits that caused the uproar in the first place - self-importance, arrogance, and ignorance. The "apology" is no more than a half-hearted attempt at deflection and a misplaced plea for pity. It will both fail to deflect the bad press, and will not garner any pity.
This is an excellent lesson in how to not handle customer relationships, management of negative press, and fixing your mistakes. Entrepreneurs, take note - look at what Cook's Source did, and don't do that. Always assume you are at fault first. When you are at fault, go the extra mile to make it right. If you get caught with your pants down, join the chorus laughing at your embarrassment and use it as an opportunity to market your underwear.
Plus, if I remember correctly, the editor thought Monica should rather compensate her for editing it. She'd been in the business for decades, she said, and Monica should feel privileged. Holy crap.
Her business is to work "with small food-oriented businesses and farms to get the word out on their works/products". The vehicle is publishing, and I get the feeling she's using the magazine the same way a lot of normal people use their computers: as a means to an end.
If I had to guess, I'd wager that's why she doesn't understand copyright. Her area of expertise (and I use that word with a HUGE grain of salt) is food and local business.
"Yes Monica, I have been doing this for 3 decades, having been an editor at The Voice, Housitonic Home and Connecticut Woman Magazine. I do know about copyright laws."
I concede that Cooks Source is a small local mag, not a publishing empire (like, say, Cooks Illustrated.) But I would counter that working "with small food-oriented businesses" is her mission, not her business. She accepts advertising for the magazine, and therefore it has become a business in the traditional sense.
That's fair, but the reason she's taken so much heat is that she blasted the author whose work was stolen, citing decades of experience that gave her authority on copyright law. If her area of expertise is food, then she has no business citing her business in editorial work as a viable defense.
It's similar to development and development management. They require different skills - being a good developer doesn't mean you'll be a good development manager and vice versa.
Similarly being a journalist (which is about research and writing) is very different to being an editor (which is about organisation and the commercial side of things).
That said, her level of knowledge seems insufficient for either role. The basics of copyright law would seem to be a pre-requisite for anything involving writing these days.
Can we just do the "put yourself in their shoes" thing for a moment, and consider that she may be heart-broken by all of this, and typed that note through tears? Have you ever attempted to write a note (typed or hand-written), under extreme stress, pain, or frustration? I know I have. It wasn't pretty.
As much as I agree with you, if you're writing a public missive about the future of your company, it doesn't make sense to publish the draft, much less the draft you wrote through heartbroken tears. There's a professional context to consider.
Particularly when if you paste the first paragraph (all three and a bit lines of it) into Word it points out the "Id/I'd" error and two other errors (traveling [sic] and hasnt [sic]).
Zero skill, knowledge or emotional togetherness required.
I've written emails during emotional turmoil before, usually related to relationships. I scour those, looking for any instance where what I said could be misinterpreted.
Wow, reading this didn't give me any sympathy for her at all. I'm reminded of the episode of South Park where Cartman feels bad only about getting punished, no actual guilt or remorse for his crime, and fails to understand how the other kids can feel bad in any way other than because of punishment.
She steals someone else's work, gets caught and sends an arrogant, rude email with absurd claims (web is public domain) and then when she is hit with the internet backlash, she writes a post that it's not her fault because she was overworked and throws in an insincere apology where she still clearly doesn't believe she did anything wrong ("I think I did a nice job for you").
The original article didn't irk me nearly as much as her rebuttal. Quite frankly, if this really does put them out of business, they deserve it.
If that list of plagiarized articles is accurate, she certainly seemed to have it coming, but you'll have to forgive me if I can't feel awesome about the victory of asymmetrical internet mob justice over a small-time regional magazine.
God forbid they ever smell blood in the water you're swimming in.
Actually the so-called "mob justice" was a HUGE FAVOR. I'll explain.
How would you feel if your start-up was ripped off? Would you want HN people to rally around you, or would that be "mob justice"?
And what if it turned out the same people were also ripping off, say, Microsoft and Apple and several other large corporations?
If everyone had been so civil and polite, they wouldn't have felt pressured to shut down.
I don't know about you, but I'll take Facebook comments and phone calls over getting served with papers from half a dozen massive legal departments any day.
Lawsuits are expensive even when you're innocent.
If the penalties are draconian for not even distributing but just "making available" mp3s with NO commercial intentions whatsoever, what do you think the penalties are going to look like for massive distribution of hundreds or thousands of discrete willful infringements for profit?
This so-called mob justice is immeasurably nicer than what the actual legal system would have done to them.
MP3s are different, they're covered by a specific law (the Digital Millennium Copyright Act) created at the behest of the record companies and it wouldn't apply here.
While there may be some elements of criminal law that might apply, in all probability this would have been a straight civil case rather than a criminal matter with the writers claiming damages for the work published without permission. She could have accepted liability (or even not done so), paid them (which would likely have been relatively limited given the pieces she's used - it's not like she's been grabbing major scoops from the NYT) and moved on.
The chances are that the writers would be no more interested in racking up legal bills that she would so costs there would have been minimal. Basically she gives each one of them a few hundred dollars, they give her a letter saying it's OK to run the piece.
She was in the wrong but the punishment (essentially being forced out of business) doesn't really fit the "crime" and the legal remedies would have been far easier on her than the mob was.
Phoning to say "you're an utter asshole", while not a nice thing to do, is still not exactly the same as lynching someone. Tone down the hyperbole a bit, please.
Sure, but thousands of people phoning in to say “you’re an utter asshole” — leading to the site’s closure — isn’t simply “not a nice thing to do,” though.
They got what they deserved, but if it ain’t “mob justice,” I don’t know what else to call it. The Internet, en masse, certainly has a pulse and life of it’s own.
Mobs don't always bring justice, but I have trouble feeling bad when they do. I mean, so far this mob has a better record than the legal system does in bringing copyright claims to a reasonable conclusion, so it's not as though there's a bulletproof alternative.
I completely lost any possible sympathy for her when she posted this to Facebook, a day or so after the story broke:
------------
Hi Folks!
Well, here I am with egg on my face! I did apologise to Monica via email, but aparently it wasnt enough for her. To all of you, thank you for your interest in Cooks Source and Again, to Monica, I am sorry -- my bad!
You did find a way to get your "pound of flesh..." we used to have 110 "friends," we now have 1,870... wow!
For what it's worth, the person who wrote that was not the real Judith--someone created a fake Facebook account and made several posts like (and including) this one.
In the wall area, if you click on "Filters" and then "Just Cooks Source Magazine", you'll see that post I mentioned, which Facebook says originates from the Cooks Source Magazine Facebook page.
Interesting--the Cooks Source page you linked is indeed the official group (created long before this debacle), and that appears to be a post from the group itself (so it is probably the real Judith). That being said, when this story went viral someone created a fake Judith profile and proceeded to troll everyone by posting extremely similar statements simultaneously apologizing and defending her stance.
Regardless, I think we can all agree this person is clearly in the wrong industry and still has little personal accountability for her mistakes.
> Maybe "she" deserves a serious wake-up call, but "they" most certainly do not.
Being a two-person operation is probably why they ripped off most if not all of their content.
"Craftier Internet denizens started to research more of Cooks Source's publications, discovering that other articles could be lifted from The Food Network, Martha Stewart, NPR and even Disney."
Economist:
"A host of Facebook and other denizens have traced over 100 other articles that have appeared in the magazine to The Food Network, NPR, Martha Stewart, Sunset, and others. A Google Docs spreadsheet maintains the list."
It doesn't sound like they really had employees and it's not as though they were compensating external writers fairly either!
I'm all for small businesses and these underdog publications, but this individual comes across as having had it coming and has an awful attitude.
If the interest is there from her audience, then someone will step in to fill that void, and hopefully they'll have more sense when it comes to fairly sourcing content for a new magazine.
She appears to be some sort of owner as well as editor. And it appears only two people actually make money from that magazine - the other may also be an owner-type.
Bleary-eyed I didnt notice it was copy written and reordered some of it.
Copyright is the default, not the exception. Unless there's an explicit declaration that copying is OK (e.g. Creative Commons, other licenses), you should assume you can't copy it.
She gets no sympathy from me. In fact, her comments just push me further from her side.
That is true for the US, not necessarily the rest of the world. Not disagreeing with your point, just want to help out anyone that would take away what you said as hard fact.
The US, where Cooks Source seems to be based, is a signatory of the Berne Convention[1]. From Wikipedia:
The Berne Convention requires its signatories to recognize the copyright of works of authors from other signatory countries (known as members of the Berne Union) in the same way as it recognises the copyright of its own nationals. For example, French copyright law applies to anything published or performed in France, regardless of where it was originally created.
No sympathy from me. Anyone who works as a magazine editor should realize that these things are copyrighted (NOT "copy written"; seriously, editor?) by default. The FIRST thing you do is check the article's license, and if there isn't one, get permission (NOT "contact the author" to let them know you've decided to use it; she never had that right). Monica had every right to be rude -- Cooks Source had unapologetically violated her rights. This article just makes them seem whiny and reluctant to take responsibility for their own choices. I bet if they had owned up right away and published a real apology plus a mention of paying the author for her work, things would have gone much more smoothly.
> But one night when working yet another 12 hour day late into the night, I was short one article... Instead of picking up one of the multitude of books sent to me and typing it, I got lazy and went to the www and "found" something. Bleary-eyed I didnt notice it was copy written and reordered some of it. I did keep the author's name on it rather than outright "stealing" it, and it was my intention to contact the author, but I simply forgot, between proofreading, deliveries, exhaustion.
And I suppose the author was also "bleary-eyed" when she plagiarized all the other articles which were identified as having been taken from other cooking magazines?
"Facebook has not responded at all; not taken these advertisers name off this bogus site -- or remove the site completely -- and takes no responsibility that someone unnamed can just create a page that can suggest that people"
The entire internet is public domain, except for her site, I guess.
Wow... that's one of the least gracious apologies I've ever seen. 1150 words, of which around 100 is the apology (including the choice phrase "I think I did a nice job for you") and the rest of it is excuses and blame shifting.
"If my apology to Monica seemed shallow it was because I was angry about the harm she has inflicted on others on behalf of her own agenda."
This is neither an a letter of apology nor an admission of wrongdoing, it's a statement of blame.
"Thank you to all our readers, thanks to all our advertisers and writers... and to everyone who has been supportive and who has been a part of Cooks Source. To one writer in particular, Monica Gaudio, I wish you had given me a chance."
The "one writer in particular" directly after referring to the magazine's writers almost implies that she thinks Monica is one of their writers. I wonder if she thinks that the entire Internet are her writers?
I don't think that violating copyright is incurring her the wrath of the Internet. Plenty of people distribute content that isn't theirs, and usually they get sympathy when the big bad RIAA comes in. It's the fact that every time she gets called out on a mistake, she insults the victim. You can get away with being wrong or with being nasty, but not both.
I am curious to hear the opinions of some of the people in this comment thread regarding the downloading of copyrighted music, torrenting copyrighted films, downloading copyrighted books, or otherwise illegally using copyrighted content.
I'm not defending this woman as she did do something wrong. However, I think it's distressing that people are celebrating her "defeat," especially as (I would guess) most of her critics are avid supporters of pirated content. Isn't there some statistic about how every American violates some copyright law just about every day?
Cooks Source was a small, free, regional publication--the kind you ignore at the dentist's. This doesn't excuse Cooks Source and doesn't mean that Monica shouldn't have taken issue like she did. But in the end, I just don't see a david vs. goliath story: I just see a bunch of people ganging up on one person.
No. There is a difference between pirating for personal use or even sharing with others and re-publishing content for profit.
Copyright survives precisely because it is not enforced 100% - if it was followed by the letter, everybody would very soon see that it's not a good idea, crippling culture and turning the participation in public discourse on its head. This is also why there are rules like Fair Use - to acknowledge that there is an area where copyright is just not producing any net worth for society.
That said, you cannot then go on and follow that because it is rarely followed to the letter by regular people, the whole system isn't working. I see the recent "liberal" approach to cultural content as a plain opposite and equal reaction to the decades of capitalizing on culture. The media industry had their way for a good while and very nearly fully commercialized it (which is why, even today, you see people arguing that artists wouldn't produce art if they weren't paid for it) and now that the sole purpose of their existence (distribution of cultural content) is done better, cheaper and more efficient by regular people do they circle around themselves eating their own young.
I see the Cooks Source incident as a very weird example of a regular person behaving as entitled as the big media corporations do (or compare, for instance, the various Timbaland "situations" we've had over the years) - she is not in a position where she can act like that, but others clearly CAN.
These are all symptoms of a change that is clearly happening, but the outcome will not consist of those symptoms. Or at least I hope that it does not.
(Working on the assumption that the author is being sincere here) This displays such a fundamental misunderstanding of copyright that it initially shocked me. But in retrospect I suspect this attitude is probably very widely shared, particularly amongst younger people who've grown up with Napster and filesharing and bit torrent. While most of us don't republish other people's copyrighted work, I'm sure very few of us haven't got _some_ "illegally copied" copyrighted material somewhere on a hard drive. And from one point of view, what she did is not really any different to all those YouTube videos with unauthorized music tracks backing them - I'm not saying that's a _correct_ interpretation, but I can easily understand why some people - like she's doing here - think they've got some right to do that.
I see this as a fundamental, and probably generational change in the way the public thinks about copyright, and it'll be fascinating to see how the legal system "catches up" with public expectations. It could well be that when people like her get into positions where they're making the decisions about whether to extend Disney's Mickey Mouse copyrights even further, they'll be sitting there saying "WTF?", and perhaps_ bringing some sanity back to copyright laws.
I hope some artists and creators survive long enough to see that day...
Actually, pondering this a bit further, I wonder if my idea of this being a "generational change" is wrong. I wonder how people in the 1930s or 1940s views their obligations to artists/composers/filmmakers/writers and those people's rights to control their published work?
It may be the "Disney era copyrights" are just a temporary anomaly in "the way the world works", in a similar way to the ~30 year "profitable album era" was for the music industry...
There sure is a disconnect going on between how big corporations utilize copyright to their advantage and how regular folks deal with it, rather hamfistedly, as in this case.
I disagree with your earlier statement that this might be a new way in which the public "thinks about copyright", it is rather the new way in which it is /misunderstood/. So I'd say we shouldn't confuse the mounting ignorance in the general populace (which is, mostly, attributable to just the sheer amount of stuff that is out there - logic usually fails when something gets too big to follow) with an actual shift in consciousness. There is a need to rethink a lot of this, but that shouldn't be about "how do we break the old thing", but about "how do we create a new thing" - and that is where efforts like CC come into play.
So I don't really disagree that this is a widespread phenomenon, I'm just saying that it will not be where the change comes from in the future. That is, of course, unless reality is particularly cruel to us.
I don't see much hope for the end of perpetual "temporary" copyright extension (in the US), just due to the realities of the legislative process. I also wonder if the fair use exemptions have the unintended side effect of making it seem like we don't need a public domain.
The whole idea of "generational change" is nonsense. Kids are people with no money and lot of time on their hand. Once they have money, they will purchase musics.
Many of who is against copyright and patent are libertarian radicals and anarcho-capitalists. They are one of the least likely to be caught red-handed with not understanding how copyright and patents work.
It's really amazing how utterly contemptible this editor's responses have been.
Rip off everyone else knowingly for months or years, then claim innocence and that it was an isolated mistake. Blame everyone else for your own actions and pretend that your apology was fake because people were mean FIRST, when actually the fake apology came first and THAT is what made them mad. Be offered a chance to make it up, denigrate the offer, then cry and lie later about not getting a chance.
This newest statement is so rife with errors, I gotta say:
"I am sorry, but you as a professional should know that the article we used written by you was in very bad need of editing"
I also like how she makes it out to be about one blogger, when it turns out Cooks Source stole articles and photos from sites for The Food Network, Oprah, and Martha Stewart. They would have been sued out of existence anyway.
"If my apology to Monica seemed shallow it was because I was angry about the harm she has inflicted on others on behalf of her own agenda."
Pretending it's about one blogger, when in reality it was the collective actions of thousands of people that the editor pissed off. And pretending that her apology was affected by events that hadn't even happened yet!
"I really wish she had given me a chance to respond to her before blasting me. She really never gave me a chance."
So ripping people off is okay, but pointing this out is "blasting someone". And of course she got the chance to respond, her fake apology was included in the initial post and was what pissed everyone off. "The Web Is Public Domain", the headline that GOT all the attention, is from her response, the one she claims she never got the chance to make.
"But one night when working yet another 12 hour day late into the night, I was short one article..."
Anyone can make a mistake, but the research shows they ripped off most if not all of their material, on a constant basis.
"Bleary-eyed I didnt notice it was copy written and reordered some of it."
Except that any editor knows that EVERYTHING is automatically copyrighted. Oh yeah, and also they ripped off plenty of stuff from big commercial sites which was obviously copyrighted and said so explicitly.
And then she was informed directly by the author that it was copyrighted, so that there was no confusion, to which the editor responded: "But honestly Monica, the web is considered "public domain" and you should be happy we just didn't "lift" your whole article and put someone else's name on it!" [...] "We put some time into rewrites, you should compensate me!"
And then...
"To one writer in particular, Monica Gaudio, I wish you had given me a chance."
She DID give the editor a chance. She just asked for a donation to the Columbia School of Journalism amounting to 10 cents per word.
So at the end, when you're finally about to face the music for a MULTITUDE of misdeeds, try to distract and cover for them all by copping to a single incident with a single person and then claim it was an accident.
Nothing is ever your fault!
It's difficult to comprehend this level of depravity.
If I recall correctly—I could be mistaken—some of the parts of the article that were supposedly "...in need of editing..." were the verbatim historical recipes, which used the archaic spellings found in the original documents (e.g. "To make pies of grene apples.") Which would make it even more entertaining, in a schadenfreude-filled sort of way.
I agree with most of your points, but I think calling it "depravity" is unwarranted.
Hanlon's razor applies: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
She doesn't understand copyright. That's the beginning and end of the problem.
I think a quote from Zed Shaw's rant on trolls is warranted too:
"I restrict my ranty words to assholes I feel are hurting other people, and I can take it as good as I get it. You got something to say? You think I fucking suck? Rock on, go ahead and say it.
But, you better fucking know your shit, 'cause I sure as hell do."
Monica knew her shit. Judith didn't. The battle was over before it started.
She's effectively written a long-winded excuse in the guide of an apology while making thinly-veiled attempts to blame the original author for her ensuing misfortune. At the same time she deftly manages to not mention the numerous other counts of plagiarism that were discovered.
I'm sure she feels extremely sorry for herself right now but for all intents and purposes she is simply a thief.
Reading this letter, all I can think is: this woman is wasting her silly recrimination and entertaining incompetence on some sort of regional print magazine, when she's so obviously tailor made for reality TV!
I might have some sympathy if I bought her premise that this ugliness could have been avoided if Monica simply waited for her to deal with the issue quietly. Monica got a written and printed apology, a donation to columbia, and a virtual assurance that this publication will no longer violate copyright. There's no way she would have received that level of satisfaction without dealing with it the way she did.
While I have no sympathy for this woman, something in her story does concern me.
"we have had so much hate email (over 400 pieces) , phone calls and regular mail."
She violated some copyright. That is an issue between her and the copyright holder. I feel slightly ashamed to be part of a community (Not HN specifically, but the more global software community) that responds with hate mail and abuse.
As soon as something is "made into a facebook group", all bets are off, I suppose. This kind of abuse is rarely (if ever) justified, so I agree with you, but I would also add that it's her making this statement and I have kind of stopped trusting that voice.
If we let anonymous mobs have this much power, the world — the real, flesh-and-blood human one, not the virtual one of Tweets, blog posts, comments and LiveJournal feeds– is going to get worse, not better.
I imagine the Iranian government might express similar sentiments about anonymous internet mobs. The power they wield might be used to all sorts of ends, some of which we might admire, and some which we might find distasteful. Would a world where we forbid the anonymous mobs from having that much power be so much better?
I've never advocated banning anonymous mobs. However, I like pointing out when they do bad things. I find too many people seem to worship the activity of internet mobs as though they're inherently good, when they're no more inherently anything than any other sort of mob.
[...] a snapshot of the page as it appeared on 16 Nov 2010 20:34:40 GMT. (in the event that the editor should decide to take down or considerably alter the statement) [1].
Assuming she means "copyrighted," damn. This individual is shockingly ignorant about the business of writing. The author of any work automatically receives copyright to that work (unless it's a work for hire, etc). It's that simple.
I want to believe no one can be that obtuse, and this line is just one more of the weak post-rationalizations she's offering for obvious bad behavior.
Hopefully she'll have learned a bit about how to interact with people on the Internet by the time she starts her next venture (if this one is going down the tubes as a result of her previous actions).
Sadly that response tells me she's learned nothing from all of this and can't see beyond her own bloodied nose.
There's a part where some of the quotes from the apology letter are implied to have been given to the Gazette in a phone interview. (not necessarily intentional)
I'm going to have to go against the prevailing view and say that you guys are being way too harsh. She messed up. She apologized.
Maybe it wan't sincere enough for you, fine. But in any case, what she did is less horrible than what has since been done to her. I have no doubt that "harass" is the right word, no doubt that her advertisers are being contacted, her voice mail stuffed, and her mailbox filled.
Based on what? How's this different than suing companies for silly shit? Its only different because you're the judge. An armchair judge. This should have been handled privately. Like adults. This is drama..a soap opera...stuff of tabloid.
Someone has wronged me and I'll unleash the internet on them.
Copyright is not "silly shit" to a bunch of programmers (especially when many of them work on open source). Programmers make things that are copyrighted. A story about an individual having their work stolen by another invokes the same response among programmers as a story about a violent robbery would invoke in a storm owner. It gets personal. Right or wrong that explains the emotion behind the mob.
(Why this doesn't extend to violating copyright on music, movies, and games is beyond me.)
Her problem isn't that she messed up. Her problem is that she doesn't understand her own business. If she had a long history of honest publishing and the story was that she had two browser windows open, one with a Creative Commons licensed article and one with an unlicensed article, and simply copied from the wrong window, that would be messing up. Not even knowing that copyright is the default state of a written work is not messing up. It's utter ignorance of a fundamental rule in the business of publishing.
You can't make something like that go away. No amount of apology is going to change the fact that you don't have the requisite knowledge to be in the publishing business. The only correct response is to go back to the drawing board and learn your shit before you come back to work.
Not to defend her, but when your typical blog author finds out that something he wrote got published, his response is one of pleasure. This "editor" is wrong on all counts, but from her perspective, the response of the blogger is highly unusual.
An interesting point - after all, if this was really about creating a good magazine and not having enough time to write the content, going with public or CC licensed content would actually make a lot of sense. So the way she conducted her business was actually not THAT far off - she just happened to be completely ignorant about there being a way that she could avoid the obvious legal issues.
"she just happened to be completely ignorant about there being a way that she could avoid the obvious legal issues"
I think she has known all along that she's been running her business illegally by stealing other people's work without permission, and because she was never confronted about it until now she became emboldened to continue to expand her illegal practices.
I think she's acting ignorant, and it does not feel genuine to me at all. Anyone who claims to have been employed as an editor for 3 decades certainly knows what is legal and illegal. She just figured that she could get away with it -- and when confronted she decided that "the best defense is a strong offense" so she attacked the author verbally and tried to belittle her -- thinking perhaps that the author would simply back away and 'disappear' rather than assert her rights.
That she continues not to use apostrophes throughout the post and gets other things wrong ("I never ment to hurt"), pretty much sends the message that "I don't really know what I'm doing" and "I just don't really care." If, as an editor, she doesn't understand basic rules of punctuation, then is it any surprise that she doesn't understand copyright?
If, as she claims, the magazine is going to go out of business, the real culprit is the editor's lack of knowledge about the business she's in.
After all, we wouldn't feel sorry for a chef who had to close his restaurant after it was revealed that he was violating health codes. Why should we feel sorry for an editor who still doesn't understand copyright, even after having gone through this whole episode?