Piracy At Billboard? Magazine Publishes Ex-Warner Exec’s Blog Post Without Asking
It's probably a honest mistake, but I had to chuckle when Techdirt's Mike Masnick noticed a tweet from former Warner Brothers Records digital executive Ethan Kaplan that Billboard had republished one of his blog posts without ever asking permission. Ethan wasn't really upset, but the incident was particularly amusing at Hypebot central because Ethan's really good about answering his email. I know that because we'd republished another post "The Death of the Album and Birth of Release" by him a week ago with his full consent. Here, however, is the bigger question:
Did Billboard remember to get permission from CMT executive and FurtureHitDNA author Jay Frank to republish his blog post on "Breaking the Digital Oligopoly"?
Share on:
Seriously, I don’t see this as a big deal. If you don’t want your writings to be found, shared, read, even stolen, DO NOT have a blog. A blog is public-facing, and implies that you want the world to know your perspective.
The Billboard post identifies that Ethan Kaplan wrote it, and he got credit, so what’s the problem?
If you’re giving proper attribution to the person who wrote the post, it’s a compliment. Billboard could have given that space to someone else, and no one would even be thinking about Ethan and his “shiny disks”.
The idea that a blogger needs to get permission to give another blogger’s writing some attention is just as antiquated as 45 vinyl singles.
sounds like hypebot has eyes on being billboard. lighten up.
I have no desire to “be Billboard” and I did say it was an “honest mistake” and “made me chuckle”.
But Carla I disagree, as a blogger when people republish a full post, I expect them to ask – as Billboard usually does. I almost always say yes.
Perhaps George White, ex-Warner Music exec. and current Billboard EVP Digital would be best suited to comment on this subject?
Yeah, Bruce, Jay gave permission for that post.
I was trying to make a joke… I never doubted that you got permission. So much for my humor skills. My apologies.
Bruce, I see your point, and if Billboard usually asks for permission, I can also understand. After all, they are an established news organization. They have journalistic standards to uphold.
Now I do ask for permission when I post someone else’s work on my blog, BUT when people re-post (steal, plagiarize) my work, I’m not attached to it. If someone cares enough to use my content, I see it as a good thing.
If I can write one good blog post, there will always be more. Other people reposting my writing is just not an issue to me. I understand that not everyone agrees with me 😉
Hello — I’m the editor of Billboard.biz and I’d actually like to thank everyone for pointing out our accidental lapse in protocol: We always intend to get a writer’s permission before reposting content and, due to a miscommunication in this case, we mistakenly thought Ethan had given the go-ahead. I’ve apologized to him and we hope to include his writing on our site again — with his permission, of course.
And I thought me saying the CD should die would be the controversial aspect of the post.
@ Ethan Kaplan
I completely agree with you and loved reading your blog post! I believe that most people are thinking it but are afraid to propose this radical idea. It is hard to accept the facts but statistics do say that the record business will be gone in aprox. 10 years if nothing happens.
Just a matter of who those “guys” are
Yes, I can verify Glenn got my permission. But for some reason, he took out that part about me being a “regular Hypebot contributor”. Hmmm… (Ok, that was my feeble humor attempt)