The Morning Animals Are Thieves

Upon hearing that Jim Traber and Al Eschbach talked about Patrick's brilliant drinking game on the air yesterday, I suspected the Morning Animals might be talking about it today. So, instead of tuning in to the vastly superior Toby Rowland like I usually do, I instead listened to WWLS.

Sure enough, the Morning Animals were all over it, touting it all morning. Well, they just read it, and much to my chagrin, they omitted all reference to TheLostOgle.com. Having laughed quite a bit, one of them finally asked Pork where he had found it. His response: a nervous "a local blogger." Then he's asked, "Is it one we can mention on the air?" And Pork says he doesn't know.

And now, just as I type this, we are informed that the phone lines are lighting up with people wanting to know where they could get their hands on it. And they say they'll "type it up and post it on our own web site."

Note to the Morning Animals: That is stealing, plain and simple. You are taking the words and thoughts of someone else and not giving them credit. I doubt Patrick worked very hard on the post since, well, he had some serious material to work with and, frankly, we don't work hard at anything, but these guys are also spitting in the faces of people who might actually put a lot of work into their product. And all for a five minute bit and a few laughs.

Just because we may be the bloggers and message board idiots Steely hates doesn't give he and his buddies license to take things without attribution. Radio hosts stealing material from blogs is nothing new, but I figured these guys were above that. At least Jim and Al had the decency to give proper credit...

UPDATE: I guess we could call this little mini-controversy over. Our point has been made, and better yet, understood, which is all we could really hope for in this situation. And frankly, we've probably got more mileage out of this than we would if Patrick's post would have been properly attributed. So no hard feelings, though it would be nice if Steely would tone down the rhetoric a bit when it comes to the "internet people." Once you get your own MySpace page, it's a little difficult to keep the high ground.