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Arrington : "You’re Welcome, You Bastards"
- hapless 16y agoThis is kind of a pissy, spiteful post. Why would anyone ever take this kind of conflict public ? What does Arrington have to gain by going around jamming his thumb in "old media" eyes ?
- MikeCapone 16y ago> What does Arrington have to gain by going around jamming his thumb in "old media" eyes ? Pageviews?
- noarchy 16y agoThis. Arrington plays the game every bit as much as the rest of them. But he's willing to expose how it works, from time to time, in order to make money for himself. I find it entertaining, which is the point.
- idoh 16y agoIf you don't like the post, just flag it and move on.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- njharman 16y ago> What does Arrington have to gain A troll, like Arrington, craves and hopes to gain attention. Like all trolls the solution is to ignore him. And quit reading clicking through to techcrunch.
- noarchy 16y agoPosts meant to generate discussion/heat are the bread & butter of Techcrunch. I don't find that their articles tend break news, or have anything remarkably insightful to say. They are an entertainment news source, I suppose.
- OliverSmith 16y agoprobably still angry about the iphone controversy that he wishes involved him
- look_lookatme 16y agoHe's using the potential bad press over this whole childish incident (on both sides) to head off a letter from lawyers. I suspect it will work.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- yosho 16y agoI'm going to side on Arrington on this one, even though sometimes, he likes to make a big deal out of something small like removing a few words from his post.
- maukdaddy 16y agoWhy? All he had to do was select a few sentences from the excerpts and edit his post. There's greater reward in the long run from acting like an adult, working well with others, and not being a complete douche.
- gte910h 16y agoActually, 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.
- neilc 16y agoFortune 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 distribution. Getting all peeved about being woken up at 6:30 AM is silly.
- stanleydrew 16y agoReminds me of the kinds of posts we saw after the whole CrunchPad/JooJoo thing fell apart.
- nopal 16y agoThis 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.
- gte910h 16y agoYeah, 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.
- greyman 16y agoHard 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. ;-)
- dkarl 16y agoI 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.
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- RuadhanMc 16y agoIt's a douche-douche situation.
- edw519 16y agoI 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 was reading all the cards I had sent him? Michael Arrington is like that friend. I will probably never send him an email because I don't want anyone else (much less the whole world) reading it.
- swombat 16y agoThat'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.
- edw519 16y agoslanted 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 point (as antecdotes are usually meant to do). It's the same as the office gossip. If he's saying/doing that to someone else, what's he saying/doing about me?
- danh 16y agoThank 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.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- WestCoastJustin 16y agoPersonally, I like that he is standing up for himself. Playing chicken with Arrington might not be the best idea. From what I've seen in the past (posts like this) he is more than open about what people say in (assumed) private e-mails/phone calls. My guess is they back off shortly. No one likes having their dirty laundry airing to the public. Thought they could push him around behind closed doors.
- jimbokun 16y agoI don't see much to be ashamed of in the emails posted so far.
- abalashov 16y agoHe's rather open with things that are assumed public but also assumed to likely stay within the relatively small communities whence they germinated. Not technically a violation of anything, but morally inconsiderate without asking first. I'll make no secret of my own grudge with Arrington. Back in December, I wrote this comment - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=998318 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=998318 - on Hacker News, rather critical of loud web acquisitions by Russian investors. Without so much as a heads up, to say nothing of a polite request for permission, this earned me a TechCrunch post: http://techcrunch.com/2009/12/20/are-hot-u-s-startups-the-new-bling-for-rich-russians/ http://techcrunch.com/2009/12/20/are-hot-u-s-startups-the-ne... ... Perhaps obviously but perhaps not, as a native Russian, and given what I had to say in that comment, I am not particularly interested in the kind of magnified exposure or attention that being linked on TechCrunch provides. It was a genuine statement of opinion that I more or less intended for the general HN audience. I don't really need it rubbed in the faces of these barons' hit-men that I, uh, slandered them. Sure, it's part and parcel of posting something to the public Internet, and, certainly, anyone searching Google can find my comment easily -- fine. But a little bit of consideration from Arrington's yellow journalism machine might have been helpful.
- acqq 16y agoArrington 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.
- iron_ball 16y agoThey 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.
- Lazlo_Nibble 16y agoThey 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.
- pbhjpbhj 16y agoThe 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.
- smallblacksun 16y agoThe 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.
- pbhjpbhj 16y ago>"There were rules, said Fortune. We had to prominently link to their articles printing the excerpts. And agree not to post _until_ they had posted their stuff." Until (my emphasis), means that they couldn't post simultaneously, nor before. I deduced then they were required to post after. There most have been a counter statement elsewhere given your upvotes, sorry I missed it, what was it?
- gluejar 16y agoArrington's post with excerpts is exploitative of Fortune. Once you've read the TechCrunch post, there's no value left in reading the Fortune articles. Sure, it great for selling the book, but the magazine is screwed. On the fortune side, they were not clear about whether they're promoting the book or the magazine, since their editor is the author, so Arrington has a legitimate excuse by arguing that he's just not very smart and was confused by the distinctions.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- kyro 16y agoThis really shouldn't have 80+ votes. Someone please tell me why this is interesting.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- staunch 16y agoArrington has a law degree, millions of dollars, and a massively popular platform. He don't scare easy.
- jimbokun 16y ago"Arrington has a law degree, millions of dollars, and a massively popular platform." It's just sad that is what it takes to be able to stand up to legal bullying. (Not sure that legal bullying is happening here, but certainly Arrington can stand up to it, and most people can't.)
- xiaoma 16y agoIt really does appear that no good deed goes unpunished.
- petercooper 16y agoI've always felt that Arrington is a pragmatist and rationalist working in a field made up of antiquated policies, back-stabbing PR people, and bizarre ethics that it would take a lifetime to learn. As a pro-blogger, of sorts, I can certainly sympathize.
- Amanjeev 16y agoWhatever you say, Arrignton has a point in this one. Web publishing is NOT the same as Paper publishing. No wonder News papers are dying; they refuse to merge and be innovative. Last cry always is 'copyright, copyright'!
- u48998 16y agoHe has clearly quoted a lot of material, and so what if they made a mistake. This is not how a blog post should be composed from the contents which are not yours. I say TC is in error again and is just whining.
- tkeller 16y agoYeah, this seems like an unbiased account. I bet there's NO information he left out of this story... Michael Arrington would never shade the truth.
- mhartl 16y agoI don't support everything Michael Arrington does, but I love how he's never afraid of a fight. People who think they pwn you just because they have a couple of lawyers on retainer need to have threats like this shoved back in their faces. Whether it's a bluff or not, kudos to Arrington for calling it.
- misuba 16y agoReprints are contractual matters. Draw one up. This goes double if you're calling yourself a publisher and you're working with major print entities.
- jjs 16y agoReprints 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.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- TotlolRon 16y agoThere was a copy write problem with the excerpts of the excerpts. Easy.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- huntero 16y ago"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 supposed to post ABOUT the excerpts. Their intent may be antiquated, but I think it was clearly communicated.
- smallblacksun 16y agoYeah. 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).
- megablast 16y agoAsk yourself, could they have been clearer? I mean, the fact that you are looking for clues like certain words suggests that they certainly could have written those emails better. I don't enjoy trying to ascertain what someone is trying to say, I guess I am not a fan of mysteries. Say it plainly and clearly, and these sort of mistakes do not go on.
- isleyaardvark 16y agoIf they thought publishing the full excerpts was serious enough to be calling at 6am and bringing in the lawyers, they should have been especially clear in that point from the beginning.
- adolph 16y agoI'd bet that F O R T U N E wasn't legally in a position to offer the excerpts for republishing.
- mikecane 16y agoThat 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.
- invisible 16y agoThe huge problem here is that they provided him all of this content and neglected to say, "Slim this down and use no more than 115 words." They neglected to give him a guideline to follow - and better yet, they should have just given him what he needed to create the post and nothing more. If someone comes to me and says, "Create a post based on all of this content," I am not going to take the time to pick and choose selectively what the reader sees. Why should he take the time to inconvenience his readers?
- FluidDjango 16y ago"today the book’s publisher Simon & Shuster got involved and is threatening legal action." Thanks. I needed a little more juice for my "death to the publishing industry" mission. grrrr
- duairc 16y agoThis has such a linkbait headline. This is some completely uninteresting drama about, at least to me. But the headline is such that my impulse is to click on it. I guess that makes me weak. But why do people upvote shit like this in the first place? Do people really care about some squabble TechCrunch are having with some other crowd? Is this really actually interesting to hackers? I really hate when I come here and I see headlines like this on the front page. This is not what I come here for.
- alain94040 16y agoAlthough you are at -2, I'll answer you anyway. It's interesting to me because it shows me how things really work inside. Deconstructing stuff to find out how it works is part of hacking. Now I understand better how Forture gets an exclusive and how they go around and ask blogs to cover and promote it, and how bloggers think when they receive such offers.
- duairc 16y agoWell, thank you for responding anyway. I knew I was going to get downvoted for that comment, I just felt I needed to say it. To be honest I have no idea who Fortune are or what any of this is about really, so I was never in a position to comment on whether or not this is interesting. Fair enough if it is actually something interesting. I just find linkbait headlines like that in really bad taste and it disappoints me when I see a lot of them on the frontpage.
- SkyMarshal 16y agoSometimes shit just happens. Let it go, move on. The mistake here wasn't a miscommunication, it was in not realizing the cat was out of the bag and just cutting your losses. Just like you can't get unpregnant, you can't retract stuff once it's posted on one of the web's top blogs. Fortune's type A control freak lawyers still need to learn that it seems. The correct response from Fortune: "Oops, that's not what we intended, but oh well, lesson learned - next time be more specific. Fuck it dude, lets go bowling."
- SoftwareMaven 16y agoExcept that screw up may wind up costing Fortune a good chunk of change, in either lost advertising revenue from the "exclusive" or from Simon and Schuster seeking damages for some contract violation. Given the size of Fortune's response and S&S getting involved, my gut tells me it's the latter.
- JabavuAdams 16y ago> Just like you can't get unpregnant Um. There are several legal and safe-enough ways to get "unpregnant".
- antipaganda 16y agoYes, but often there's no way to entirely remove the effects thereof from your life thereafter.
- techiferous 16y agoThis looks like a routine miscommunication that happens all the time in business. Usually you just patch up the misunderstanding and move on. I think Arrington loves to fight, so he escalated it. So what? Why is this on Hacker News?
- billswift 16y agoHe didn't escalate it, he was just stubborn. The S&S lawyer escalated with threats of a lawsuit. Then he countered by making the disagreement public.
- techiferous 16y agoHe escalated it by refusing to comply with a simple request to shorten the original excerpts. Sure, it was not his fault that he would have had to fix the blog post, but that would've been the civil and practical thing to do, in my opinion.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- mike463 16y agoActually, all this hoopla got me to read the excerpts, and I'm thinking about getting the book (when it comes out). so... then I wonder... Is this -- all of this -- clever advertising?
- scottshapiro 16y agoThe reality is that TC posts 30+ articles per day. Articles from may 6 are now part of a very, very long tail of TC articles that will barely dribble in pageviews.
- ck2 16y agoEr, that's not an excerpt, that's like 4 (book) pages of text there. Someone screwed up at Fortune and tried to backpedal.
- abalashov 16y agoArrington's just being Arrington. Nothing to be done about that. Characteristically, he is ebulliently and abrasively assertive--indeed, at times belligerent--of his right to publish whatever he feels like publishing that day, and often frames it as a freedom of speech issue in a commercial context. This is a trait of, on the one hand, some of the world's most venerable investigative journalists and insightful commentators, but, on the other hand, also of the sleazy yellow press and fraternal unprincipled viewership/readership/ratings whores with more ignoble motives. As far as I can tell, TechCrunch is a slightly less toxic kind of Daily Mail. It should not be controversial to any reasonable person that there is merit to both sides of the issue insofar as lack of initial explicit prohibition on publication of whole excerpts does not necessarily mean it was categorically acceptable, nor does it mean that any demands for retroactive remedies from Fortune are irrelevant. On the other hand, they are obviously both trying to bully him and do something quite stupid.