Slashdot has a post up about some alleged article about plagiarism among bloggers. Of course, the site the article is on is down, so you'll have to rely on a copy-and-paste job to read the text. The author confuses "plagiarism" with copyright infringement, which is always annoying. I know I have zero problem with someone "ripping" all my amazing blog posts and publishing them verbatim on his dime on some WackyProf website. As long as he's kind enough to mention where he got the text, why do I care? It's just free publicity. For example, here's a quote from someone whose name I can't remember. I don't know, let's just call him/her Mr. Glutes:
Even though blogging is about sharing and reusing information, excessive sharing threatens the authors penning the original content. The tale of the goose laying the golden egg springs to mind as, quite simply, greed can be the blogging world's biggest enemy.

Dang, that was fun. I'm definitely getting that giddy feeling that comes from breaking the law and bein' greedy. I don't know about the tale of the goose laying the golden egg (sounds sick, really), but I am reminded of another tale about Cinderella. As I remember, a prince found a blockquote on some blog somewhere and, as luck would have it, the quote was not attributed correctly. So, the Prince had to go all around the land, testing out the blog to see upon which foot it fit.

At least, I think that's how it went. Who came up with all these fairy tales anyway? I guess we won't ever know, since whoever re-told them didn't even bother to keep up with the attribution. Those rascals!! Now all these tales are utterly USELESS, their creators are going unpaid and unappreciated, all because some jerks kept telling the tales without securing permission first.

Down with the Brothers Grimm!!!!