Drudge Steals
July 31, 2004 7:26 AM Subscribe
Matt Drudge allegedly steals photo from Tom Tomorrow and manipulates it for whatever reasons make sense to Matt Drudge.
The permalink is about two full screens above the Drudge story, once you click through scroll down quite a ways until you get to the photo of Bill O'Reilly & Michael Moore. I gotta say though, this seems pretty trivial, especially w/out the screenshot.
posted by jonson at 7:37 AM on July 31, 2004
posted by jonson at 7:37 AM on July 31, 2004
Actually, ignore my comment about the scrolling, link seems fine.
posted by jonson at 7:39 AM on July 31, 2004
posted by jonson at 7:39 AM on July 31, 2004
Actually, Tom Tomorrow apparently doesn't include the dimensions of his photos in his html, so the browser does sort of jump around once the photos are loaded. I actually linked to the permalink of the entry just above the Drudge story. It will seem fine when you go back, because you have the photos in your cache.
posted by crunchland at 7:41 AM on July 31, 2004
posted by crunchland at 7:41 AM on July 31, 2004
If it's trivial, then why the theft?
posted by FormlessOne at 7:44 AM on July 31, 2004
posted by FormlessOne at 7:44 AM on July 31, 2004
Obviously this is done to distract America from John Kerry's big speech.
posted by kablam at 8:02 AM on July 31, 2004
posted by kablam at 8:02 AM on July 31, 2004
Presumably, we have a bunch of witnesses who all saw the photograph when the page it was linked here a few days ago.
posted by crunchland at 8:04 AM on July 31, 2004
posted by crunchland at 8:04 AM on July 31, 2004
I would like to see both of them in a celebrity boxing match.
posted by mecran01 at 8:04 AM on July 31, 2004
posted by mecran01 at 8:04 AM on July 31, 2004
...and um, Arielmeadow linked the photo issue in the thread when it was posted a few days ago, too. That's what I get for avoiding political threads on metafilter.
posted by crunchland at 8:08 AM on July 31, 2004
posted by crunchland at 8:08 AM on July 31, 2004
Tom vs. Matt, Bill vs. Michael, Rush vs. Al...
Wankers, all.
posted by dhoyt at 8:22 AM on July 31, 2004
Wankers, all.
posted by dhoyt at 8:22 AM on July 31, 2004
I'm surprised by this lapse of journalistic integrity, it's unusual on Drudge's part
posted by matteo at 8:37 AM on July 31, 2004
posted by matteo at 8:37 AM on July 31, 2004
But I thought Drudge stole photos all the time? It's not like he has any rights to the wire service photos he puts up on his front page.
posted by smackfu at 8:41 AM on July 31, 2004
posted by smackfu at 8:41 AM on July 31, 2004
Are you sure this is illegal? I don't see any rights reserved on the website. Also, flipping the picture and making the light green instead of red, might have been done just avoid having users eyes automatically drift to the red light. It doesn't seem like a viable way of "changing" the picture to the extent someone else wouldn't recognize it.
posted by xammerboy at 8:43 AM on July 31, 2004
posted by xammerboy at 8:43 AM on July 31, 2004
flipping the picture and making the light green instead of red, might have been done just avoid having users eyes automatically drift to the red light.
This isn't art photography. If anything, you should leave background elements as they were if you want to be considered a reliable journalist.
It may not be illegal for him to do this, but Drudge probably didn't want to take the chance. What a sleazebag.
posted by destro at 9:29 AM on July 31, 2004
This isn't art photography. If anything, you should leave background elements as they were if you want to be considered a reliable journalist.
It may not be illegal for him to do this, but Drudge probably didn't want to take the chance. What a sleazebag.
posted by destro at 9:29 AM on July 31, 2004
xammerboy: (of course, IANAL) in modern copyright law, you have "all rights reserved" on all works you create even if you don't have an explicit statement saying so. You can reduce the amount you're "reserving", but nothing a copyright statement says can ever increase the amount of protection you have by default (under copyright law).
posted by skynxnex at 9:42 AM on July 31, 2004
posted by skynxnex at 9:42 AM on July 31, 2004
Regardless of whether or not it's legal, it's certainly unethical.
But this is Drudge we're talking about, so...
posted by Vidiot at 10:13 AM on July 31, 2004
But this is Drudge we're talking about, so...
posted by Vidiot at 10:13 AM on July 31, 2004
The changing of light color is clearly an al-qaida steganographic message. Osama has worked out a deal with Drudge where Drudge gets the word out to the cells and in exchange he gets an exclusive interview with Osama's hair stylist.
posted by srboisvert at 12:10 PM on July 31, 2004
posted by srboisvert at 12:10 PM on July 31, 2004
Someone put someone else's photo up on their page? On the Internet!? Oh noes!!!11
posted by reklaw at 12:45 PM on July 31, 2004
posted by reklaw at 12:45 PM on July 31, 2004
Duh, it's clearly been switched to make it easier to track who's who: O'Reilly is on the RIGHT, and Moore is on the LEFT...
posted by freebird at 3:50 PM on July 31, 2004
posted by freebird at 3:50 PM on July 31, 2004
What a big sad doofus.
Good things webloggers are journalists, huh? [/troll]
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 5:33 PM on July 31, 2004
Good things webloggers are journalists, huh? [/troll]
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 5:33 PM on July 31, 2004
has drudge done anything ever?
he doesnt write.
he was leaked the story about monica.
during this, the peak of conservatives dominating radio and tv talk shows, he cant find a way to get his radio show out of the sunday evening graveyard.
can you really be considered a has-been if you were a never-was?
posted by tsarfan at 5:43 PM on July 31, 2004
he doesnt write.
he was leaked the story about monica.
during this, the peak of conservatives dominating radio and tv talk shows, he cant find a way to get his radio show out of the sunday evening graveyard.
can you really be considered a has-been if you were a never-was?
posted by tsarfan at 5:43 PM on July 31, 2004
It was a violation of copyright law both to post the picture and to make the changes to it (thus creating an unauthorized derivative work). However, the greater crime is that Tom T doesn't add dimensions to his IMG tags. He must be stopped!
posted by Outlawyr at 5:04 AM on August 1, 2004
posted by Outlawyr at 5:04 AM on August 1, 2004
Tom Tomorrow says he has a screen-cap. He'll presumably post it soon.
If Drudge had nicked the photo and not changed it, I probably wouldn't care. But the fact that he went to these lengths to hide his crime is pathetic.
posted by robcorr at 10:34 PM on August 1, 2004
If Drudge had nicked the photo and not changed it, I probably wouldn't care. But the fact that he went to these lengths to hide his crime is pathetic.
posted by robcorr at 10:34 PM on August 1, 2004
Wow, that's pretty blatant. What I don't understand is that - if Drudge doesn't have deals with the wire services - why don't the big guns like AP and Reuters go after him for his obvious infringement?
posted by dabitch at 7:04 AM on August 2, 2004
posted by dabitch at 7:04 AM on August 2, 2004
I've written about this twice and asked Drudge about it (of course, with no email response.) I'm not sure why no one calls him out publicly about it. He's stealing bandwidth from Yahoo!, MyWay, Boston.com, et al on a regular basis. Let alone the fact that he's posting images he doesn't have deals to show his readers.
I actually called The Smoking Gun about it once and the person there basically said "Yeah, we know he's doing it, but we aren't going to say anything about it."
It's actually even worse when he uses the wire service images, because he doesn't even host 99% of them on his site. He lets those companies host the bandwidth to serve up "8 million" pageviews per day. Isn't this like...stealing? People have gotten their hosting accounts suspended for less than what Drudge is doing.
posted by djspicerack at 12:34 PM on August 2, 2004
I actually called The Smoking Gun about it once and the person there basically said "Yeah, we know he's doing it, but we aren't going to say anything about it."
It's actually even worse when he uses the wire service images, because he doesn't even host 99% of them on his site. He lets those companies host the bandwidth to serve up "8 million" pageviews per day. Isn't this like...stealing? People have gotten their hosting accounts suspended for less than what Drudge is doing.
posted by djspicerack at 12:34 PM on August 2, 2004
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posted by crunchland at 7:30 AM on July 31, 2004