I actually had some free time last night, which hasn’t happened for awhile. I decided to do a bit of surfing around the Packers’ blogosphere and soon encountered what you might call the two completely diametric opposite poles of said blogosphere.
I’ll start with the good – or more specifically, the excellent.
As you may or may not have noticed, I haven’t even addressed the lockout on these pages. If one of the other fine authors on this site wish to do so, they are more than welcome. But it’s just not my cup of tea. I would have made an awful lawyer, and I frankly have little interest in paying attention to some really wealthy people on both sides argue over money (that we, as fans, supply to them). I can spend all day watching game film, but 5 minutes of lockout talk, and I feel this urge to rush out of the room.
A few recent things, though, have caught my attention – mainly the blatant propaganda the NFL is putting out to fans to convince us that the players are the bad guys. Threatening to “close down” the NFL was the last straw. I’m not a big fan of bullshit (probably the MAIN reason why I could never be a lawyer). But as angry as I am about some of these things that have briefly caught my attention, I could never sit down and write an entire article about it (nor would I have any desire to).
Fortunately, I don’t have to. The task of laying out the current landscape of this whole asinine mess has been taken on quite nicely, and succinctly, by Aaron Nagler over at CheeseheadTV.com. Highly recommended reading.
And now, on to the seamy side of the Packers Blogosphere. No, I’m not talking about some racy Packers fan site where everyone’s butt-naked except for their cheeseheads, I’m talking blatant plagiarism. Complete word-for-word plagiarism. And no, I’m not talking about someone stealing this amateur’s writing. I’m talking about taking articles written by an award-winning journalist, publishing them on your own piece of shit website, and having the balls to call it your own. What kind of a sleaze would do that?
Glad you asked. The website in question is Packersmix.com. Looking for a Jason Wilde (award-winning sportswriter at ESPNMilwaukee.com) article I needed to reference, my Google search somehow brought me to that site. Strange, I thought, so I started reading this article by “Kris Schmidt” (I have no idea if that’s his real name). Then it got stranger. “This is Jason’s article,” I said to myself. I quickly surfed over to ESPNMilwaukee.com, found the article and sure enough, it was Jason’s article, word-for-word. Correction, he did change the title – see, he’s not all bad- right?
I let Jason know (I’d want someone to tell me, after all) and looked a little closer. It wasn’t just one article. There were more. And not just Jason’s articles were being pilfered. I quickly spotted one from Chris Jenkins, an Associated Press writer.
Jason put the word out on twitter, and soon there were a slew of nasty comments left for this “author” on “his” article. I was about to encourage you all to do the same when I noticed the post had disappeared. But don’t worry, lest anyone thing I’m making this up, I have a screen shot (click on the image to enlarge it):
Here is the original article on ESPNMilwaukee.com. As I check the site this morning, it now looks like all of the stolen articles have been taken down. But they still need to be punished somehow, don’t you think?
While I really don’t want to encourage anyone to visit this scummy site, I suppose it would be just fine as long as you are tormenting them in some way. Leave nasty comments on anything they post. Or contact their advertisers or their web host or anything along those lines. But please don’t do anything illegal – that’s their job.
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Jersey Al Bracco is the founder and editor of AllGreenBayPackers.com, and the co-founder of Packers Talk Radio Network. He can be heard as one of the Co-Hosts on Cheesehead Radio and is the Green Bay Packers Draft Analyst for Drafttek.com.
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Al, this is not surprising. The “writers” at PackerChatters have been republishing parts or whole articles as theirs for years.
No, there is actually a BIG difference. PackerChatters asks permission to re-publish articles from the author, and always credits the actual author. BIG difference. And I know this for a fact because early on in my “blogging career”, I allowed them to publish my articles. All with my consent.
What PackersMix is doing is just plain stealing.
It looks like the anonymous internet shits are at it again. Sure, I’m a complete social retard. Sure, my kids get their asses beat on a regular occasion due to my parental advice but gosh darn it, you know my name.
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Behavior like this, misreprestinging youself is reprehenbily. Why does Ted Thompson play these games?
Terrible Ted’s a naughty boy…
I jerked off to this so fast.
I love this site!