This is kind of a pissy, spiteful post. Why would anyone ever take this kind of conflict public ? What does Arrington have to gain by going around jamming his thumb in "old media" eyes ?
Arrington plays the game every bit as much as the rest of them. But he's willing to expose how it works, from time to time, in order to make money for himself. I find it entertaining, which is the point.
A troll, like Arrington, craves and hopes to gain attention. Like all trolls the solution is to ignore him. And quit reading clicking through to techcrunch.
Posts meant to generate discussion/heat are the bread & butter of Techcrunch. I don't find that their articles tend break news, or have anything remarkably insightful to say. They are an entertainment news source, I suppose.
I'm going to side on Arrington on this one, even though sometimes, he likes to make a big deal out of something small like removing a few words from his post.
Actually, I think you're wrong on both accounts. Fortune is jerking him around. Calling them on it is not a bad thing, because a working relationship on those terms will likely cost more than it will benefit.
Additionally, bloggers (and others in Attention Media) often make more from douchebaggery than from evenhandedness. (And I honestly don't think Arrington is being a douche here.
I don't see how: at least in the emails posted, Fortune never authorizes Arrington to post the full excerpt: they talk about writing a post "on the book excerpts".
In any case, I think it is more likely to be a simple miscommunication. It would be more mature for Arrington to simply concede that -- the excerpts are their copyrighted material, and they have the right to control its distribution. Getting all peeved about being woken up at 6:30 AM is silly.
On the one hand, yes, he has a valid point, but I'd guess the downvotes are from people who feel that being unclear in your communication, then calling repeatedly over and over to have you take down a post full of glowing praise and preorder links on a hugely popular blog, then, when you refuse to edit what is probably the best PR the book's had so far, threatening to sue you to have you take it down.
Fortune could have said 'Sorry, we miscommunicated, could you trim down your excerpts? Here are some example quotes you might want to include instead.' They could have called him, and when they didn't get an answer, e-mailed him instead. They could have asked nicely, or even looked on the bright side of this amazing PR. Instead, they're being the biggest assholes they can be.
So yeah, there's a point to be made there, but I think Fortune's dickery is overshadowing it.
Except for the fact that the entire blog post with the excerpts has no content except the excerpts. There's no value to be derived from it except reading the excerpts. There's no trimming them down, they are the only content.
Expecting immediate action at six AM is a bit silly, as is calling three times at that hour especially when you know the guy was up as late as 2 AM. I realize it's a priority, but expecting 24-7 service when someone's doing you a favor is a bit unreasonable.
I agree. Fortune wanted TC to write a story about Fortune having the excerpts to drive traffic to Fortune. By posting the exclusive content himself Arrington essentially stole the exclusive.
<em>I don't see how: at least in the emails posted, Fortune never authorizes Arrington to post the full excerpt: they talk about writing a post "on the book excerpts".</em>
He DID publish a book excerpt. Based on the way they kept saying full content, they want to make it sound like he published the entire book or something.
They asked if he would publish excerpts. They sent him excerpts. He published excerpts. He followed the rules and they want to change it and cry "fire" after the fact.
Except they didn't, at least not in any publicly-posted email that I can see. In fact, they describe the excerpt as "exclusive" to Fortune -- they asked Arrington to post "on the book excerpts", not "to post the book excerpts". As I said, a miscommunication -- and there is a simple, mature way to handle that.
>they asked Arrington to post "on the book excerpts", not "to post the book excerpts". As I said, a miscommunication -- and there is a simple, mature way to handle that.
No. He was giving them amazing PR. Anyone who's against getting a giant piece of positive PR on one of the world's biggest blogs is a total idiot.
Added: There was a documentary recently about an old-time woman's magazine in the UK. They'd brought in a new, modern editor to bring the magazine into the modern era and to increase sales. One thing she landed was a mostly positive write up in the Sunday Times (the UK's biggest Sunday paper). One of the owners was not particularly impressed because a few negatives were portrayed in the piece and she went nuts because it was, clearly, one of the biggest PR coups the magazine had ever had.
I would be inclined to agree, but for this one line:
<em>"I declined on the grounds that I was pissed off I was being called so many times"</em>
That, and that he then seems to take offense when they call him unprofessional? Love him or hate him, but at least come up with a better reason than that to your (business partners|vendors|partners|sources) when trying to work out a dispute.
Hard to say...they wrote to "post on excerpts", but not "post excerpts". But obviously, what would Mike gain by only posting excerpt of the excerpt? Anyone can do that without asking permission from Fortune, it's just normal blogging practice.
Now when I think about it, Fortune looks even more ridiculous in my eyes. They basically asked TC to blog about their promotional article for free. ;-)
I agree; to me, the email says that the post would be about the excerpts, and the excerpts themselves were provided simply because they weren't live on the Fortune site yet. The email quotes in the post do NOT say he is going to post the excerpts. In fact, referring to Fortune's "exclusive excerpts" clearly implies that they'll only be available on Fortune's site, i.e., not on Techcrunch.
He simply misread the emails. With the benefit of hindsight, he should see that they don't confirm his side of the story, which makes the blog post seem... weird. (Usually when you read just one guy's side of an issue, you don't come out of it thinking he's probably wrong.) At best, they're ambiguous. I think the natural reading favors Fortune, and I would say that if they're the best evidence he has, and he posted the excerpts based on these emails, then he's clearly wrong. But maybe he was misled by other communication.
And six minutes later, after they actually read the post, they had a substantive response. It's the classic email pattern of respond, then read, then really respond, aka, "I just noticed your email is full of words and decided to take a closer look." Except here the initial email was actually a blog post.
The advantage Michael got was that he got early access to the excerpts, so he could write about them and link to fortune, before anyone else. This is the standard way things work.
But I love Michaels repsonse, good on him. Unless they explicitly say, DO NOT USE THE ENTIRE EXCERPT, go for it. I mean, fortune and the author sent thank you emails just after they were posted, either they did not read it properly, or they were not clear themselves on the licensing situation.
It looks to me like the contact at fortune made the mistake, didn't check properly, and is trying to lay the blame on techcrunch. This is also, the standard way things work.
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world, the unreasonable man expects the world to adapt to him, therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
a better technique would probably have been to apologize to techcrunch for telling them the wrong thing, and then asking to take it down. as opposed to telling arrington that he misunderstood.
I've met so many of these management types who come in during the middle of a crisis and just demand things be fixed. Those are the worst, and one of my coworkers termed it "pigeon management" - they fly in, shit all over the place, and then fly away. Roth sounds like he pigeon managed the situation (from this one-sided account).
I laughed pretty hard when I read the definition you gave for 'pigeon management'. That's one of those phrases that perfectly sums up what can otherwise be difficult to explain..
we always called it seagull management too. Especially when the manager makes an appearance, eats all the "snacks" around the office and then shits all over everything before taking off.
If you admit you are wrong in paper/email, isn't it entirely possible that you can then be quoted on it later in an accusation of negligence?
In this specific instance for example, wouldn't admitting you are wrong in an email to Arrington immediately give him a solid case to defend himself with in the event he chose not to take it down?
He used the word "miscommunication" not "misunderstood." To me, miscommunication leaves open the possibility that they told him the wrong thing, but did not mean to do so. All in all, I found the emails fairly polite (though somewhat panicky).
Isn't this also the guy who involved in a huge "miscommunication" over the Crunch Pad? It's suspicious that Arrington is repeatedly on the receiving end of miscommunications, no?
That's the first thing I thought. An intern or junior PR person taking initiative and then getting slammed by their boss. Now they (junior PR) have to backpedal to avoid getting shit from their old-school boss and, as a result, all of Fortune look like idiots.
I once had a friend who never forgot a birthday or holiday. I always got a card from him. The problem was that it was always a card that someone else had sent him. He scribbled over their message and wrote his own, then added a lame message, "I'm doing my part by recycling."
This went on for years and I hated it. It wasn't funny anymore and I didn't want to read what others had written to him.
Then it hit me... Who was reading all the cards I had sent him?
Michael Arrington is like that friend. I will probably never send him an email because I don't want anyone else (much less the whole world) reading it.
That's a nice anecdote, but apart from the slanted attack on Michael Arrington (which is obviously proving popular, looking at how many upvotes you got), I'm not sure what it's got to do with the article at hand.
Michael Arrington might act like a douche sometimes (maybe even lots of the time), but that's no reason not to treat this story on its merits, rather than responding with a cute character attack.
Not an attack, just an observation. And not of his character (which I am hardly qualified to judge), just of his behavior in this particular post.
I dunno, posting word for word emails from someone else in a blog just seems a little over the top to me, regardless of the reason. I don't know the merits of this case, nor do I care.
The antecdote was to make a point (as antecdotes are usually meant to do). It's the same as the office gossip. If he's saying/doing that to someone else, what's he saying/doing about me?
Thank you for introducing me to "antecdote". Brilliant word!
I suppose it is half anecdote, half antidote, which must be highly useful. Or is it maybe an ante-anecdote, an amusing story in advance (a.k.a. prophecy)?
Not surprisingly, such a useful word is in widespread use, apparently. 33,200 uses to be exact, according to Google. But no clear definition, according to antecdotal evidence.
Perhaps the better option is to only send emails you don't mind anyone else reading. And I would even suggest that you extend this to everybody you email.
Arrington is a journalist. Fortune sent him stuff and said 'publish this'. No suprise that he published it. If you sent him something 'off the record', I have no idea what he'd do. But the original fortune emails did not look like private personal emails.
Personally, I like that he is standing up for himself.
Playing chicken with Arrington might not be the best idea. From what I've seen in the past (posts like this) he is more than open about what people say in (assumed) private e-mails/phone calls.
My guess is they back off shortly. No one likes having their dirty laundry airing to the public. Thought they could push him around behind closed doors.
He's rather open with things that are assumed public but also assumed to likely stay within the relatively small communities whence they germinated. Not technically a violation of anything, but morally inconsiderate without asking first.
Perhaps obviously but perhaps not, as a native Russian, and given what I had to say in that comment, I am not particularly interested in the kind of magnified exposure or attention that being linked on TechCrunch provides. It was a genuine statement of opinion that I more or less intended for the general HN audience. I don't really need it rubbed in the faces of these barons' hit-men that I, uh, slandered them. Sure, it's part and parcel of posting something to the public Internet, and, certainly, anyone searching Google can find my comment easily -- fine. But a little bit of consideration from Arrington's yellow journalism machine might have been helpful.
Arrington is clearly wrong. It's clear that nobody told him to copy paste the whole content, or gave him the permission.
He just trolls now for more hits.
But he'd just lose if he'd come to court.
They did say "post on" the excerpts instead of "post" the excerpts. That's a syntactic nicety which must have gone unnoticed by Arrington, but which was presumably clear in the mind of the Fortune rep.
They also repeatedly refer to the excerpt(s) as "FORTUNE's exclusive". It's not an "exclusive excerpt" if TechCrunch is republishing it in its entirety, which makes it extremely unlikely that FORTUNE believed it was offering to let Arrington do so. And I find it really, really hard to believe that Arrington wouldn't have realized this before agreeing to anything.
The excerpts were Fortune's exclusive because they got to print them first and TechCrunch to post later, marking Fortune as the originators of the scoop.
>"There were rules, said Fortune. We had to prominently link to their articles printing the excerpts. And agree not to post _until_ they had posted their stuff."
Until (my emphasis), means that they couldn't post simultaneously, nor before. I deduced then they were required to post after.
There most have been a counter statement elsewhere given your upvotes, sorry I missed it, what was it?
Maybe I misread the article, but it looks like the Fortune PR person never, ever states that TechCrunch is only supposed to post portions of the excerpts. This is the closest I could find:
> And if you don’t mind, once you’ve read the excerpts, please let me know if you choose not to post on one and not the other or both, which of course we would love.
Now, IANAL but nowhere in there does it say to not post the excerpts.
Copyright is reserved unless explicitly given. That is, what you have said may be perfectly true, and Arrington could still be in the wrong. All they have to have done is to not give him explicit permission.
And I'm surprised so many here seem to be getting this wrong. Copyright law is very important for anyone interested in the software business to understand.
Practically speaking, he is not in the wrong at all. What exactly do you think Simon&Schuster can do, sue him? Can you imagine going up to a federal judge and seeking an injunction for infringement for a guy who posted excerpts of a book that were already online? What exactly are the damages?
Arrington's post with excerpts is exploitative of Fortune. Once you've read the TechCrunch post, there's no value left in reading the Fortune articles. Sure, it great for selling the book, but the magazine is screwed. On the fortune side, they were not clear about whether they're promoting the book or the magazine, since their editor is the author, so Arrington has a legitimate excuse by arguing that he's just not very smart and was confused by the distinctions.
I've always felt that Arrington is a pragmatist and rationalist working in a field made up of antiquated policies, back-stabbing PR people, and bizarre ethics that it would take a lifetime to learn. As a pro-blogger, of sorts, I can certainly sympathize.
Whatever you say, Arrignton has a point in this one. Web publishing is NOT the same as Paper publishing. No wonder News papers are dying; they refuse to merge and be innovative. Last cry always is 'copyright, copyright'!
He has clearly quoted a lot of material, and so what if they made a mistake. This is not how a blog post should be composed from the contents which are not yours. I say TC is in error again and is just whining.
I don't support everything Michael Arrington does, but I love how he's never afraid of a fight. People who think they pwn you just because they have a couple of lawyers on retainer need to have threats like this shoved back in their faces. Whether it's a bluff or not, kudos to Arrington for calling it.
"I’d love to chat with you about FORTUNE’s exclusive excerpt of David Kirkpatrick’s book on Facebook"
"note that the story stems from an exclusive excerpt in FORTUNE of David Kirkpatrick’s new book The Facebook Effect."
"once you’ve read the excerpts, please let me know if you choose not to post on one and not the other or both"
The use of the words "exclusive" and "on" seem to make it pretty clear that he was supposed to post ABOUT the excerpts. Their intent may be antiquated, but I think it was clearly communicated.
Yeah. I think Arrington misunderstood what they asked him to do (which is fine), and then flipped out when they tried to correct his misunderstanding (which isn't).
Ask yourself, could they have been clearer? I mean, the fact that you are looking for clues like certain words suggests that they certainly could have written those emails better.
I don't enjoy trying to ascertain what someone is trying to say, I guess I am not a fan of mysteries. Say it plainly and clearly, and these sort of mistakes do not go on.
If they thought publishing the full excerpts was serious enough to be calling at 6am and bringing in the lawyers, they should have been especially clear in that point from the beginning.
121 comments
[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 161 ms ] threadPageviews?
Arrington plays the game every bit as much as the rest of them. But he's willing to expose how it works, from time to time, in order to make money for himself. I find it entertaining, which is the point.
A troll, like Arrington, craves and hopes to gain attention. Like all trolls the solution is to ignore him. And quit reading clicking through to techcrunch.
There's greater reward in the long run from acting like an adult, working well with others, and not being a complete douche.
Additionally, bloggers (and others in Attention Media) often make more from douchebaggery than from evenhandedness. (And I honestly don't think Arrington is being a douche here.
I don't see how: at least in the emails posted, Fortune never authorizes Arrington to post the full excerpt: they talk about writing a post "on the book excerpts".
In any case, I think it is more likely to be a simple miscommunication. It would be more mature for Arrington to simply concede that -- the excerpts are their copyrighted material, and they have the right to control its distribution. Getting all peeved about being woken up at 6:30 AM is silly.
Fortune could have said 'Sorry, we miscommunicated, could you trim down your excerpts? Here are some example quotes you might want to include instead.' They could have called him, and when they didn't get an answer, e-mailed him instead. They could have asked nicely, or even looked on the bright side of this amazing PR. Instead, they're being the biggest assholes they can be.
So yeah, there's a point to be made there, but I think Fortune's dickery is overshadowing it.
Didn't they do that, minus the example quotes?
I'm honestly confused here.
He DID publish a book excerpt. Based on the way they kept saying full content, they want to make it sound like he published the entire book or something.
They asked if he would publish excerpts. They sent him excerpts. He published excerpts. He followed the rules and they want to change it and cry "fire" after the fact.
Except they didn't, at least not in any publicly-posted email that I can see. In fact, they describe the excerpt as "exclusive" to Fortune -- they asked Arrington to post "on the book excerpts", not "to post the book excerpts". As I said, a miscommunication -- and there is a simple, mature way to handle that.
... pistols at dawn?
Added: There was a documentary recently about an old-time woman's magazine in the UK. They'd brought in a new, modern editor to bring the magazine into the modern era and to increase sales. One thing she landed was a mostly positive write up in the Sunday Times (the UK's biggest Sunday paper). One of the owners was not particularly impressed because a few negatives were portrayed in the piece and she went nuts because it was, clearly, one of the biggest PR coups the magazine had ever had.
<em>"I declined on the grounds that I was pissed off I was being called so many times"</em>
That, and that he then seems to take offense when they call him unprofessional? Love him or hate him, but at least come up with a better reason than that to your (business partners|vendors|partners|sources) when trying to work out a dispute.
And also ruined what could have been a very nice tablet platform.
I wonder how many good ideas are quashed simply because of policy.
Now fortune may have not had rights to let Arrington post it, but that's their issue most likely, as they misrepresented it, not Arrington
The first emails from them clearly are talking about excerpts in their entirety.
Now when I think about it, Fortune looks even more ridiculous in my eyes. They basically asked TC to blog about their promotional article for free. ;-)
He simply misread the emails. With the benefit of hindsight, he should see that they don't confirm his side of the story, which makes the blog post seem... weird. (Usually when you read just one guy's side of an issue, you don't come out of it thinking he's probably wrong.) At best, they're ambiguous. I think the natural reading favors Fortune, and I would say that if they're the best evidence he has, and he posted the excerpts based on these emails, then he's clearly wrong. But maybe he was misled by other communication.
The actual email says that he is offering TC the rights to use the exclusive material:
"I’d love to chat with you about FORTUNE’s exclusive excerpt of David Kirkpatrick’s book on Facebook, which I’d love to offer for tomorrow."
But I love Michaels repsonse, good on him. Unless they explicitly say, DO NOT USE THE ENTIRE EXCERPT, go for it. I mean, fortune and the author sent thank you emails just after they were posted, either they did not read it properly, or they were not clear themselves on the licensing situation.
It looks to me like the contact at fortune made the mistake, didn't check properly, and is trying to lay the blame on techcrunch. This is also, the standard way things work.
This is really how some people think.
In this specific instance for example, wouldn't admitting you are wrong in an email to Arrington immediately give him a solid case to defend himself with in the event he chose not to take it down?
"Hey Michael, sorry about this, but some wires got crossed on our end. My bad. Apparently…"
or
"Hey Michael, you screwed up. You better pull that post or else."
?
Isn't this also the guy who involved in a huge "miscommunication" over the Crunch Pad? It's suspicious that Arrington is repeatedly on the receiving end of miscommunications, no?
This went on for years and I hated it. It wasn't funny anymore and I didn't want to read what others had written to him.
Then it hit me... Who was reading all the cards I had sent him?
Michael Arrington is like that friend. I will probably never send him an email because I don't want anyone else (much less the whole world) reading it.
Michael Arrington might act like a douche sometimes (maybe even lots of the time), but that's no reason not to treat this story on its merits, rather than responding with a cute character attack.
cute character attack
Not an attack, just an observation. And not of his character (which I am hardly qualified to judge), just of his behavior in this particular post.
I dunno, posting word for word emails from someone else in a blog just seems a little over the top to me, regardless of the reason. I don't know the merits of this case, nor do I care.
The antecdote was to make a point (as antecdotes are usually meant to do). It's the same as the office gossip. If he's saying/doing that to someone else, what's he saying/doing about me?
I suppose it is half anecdote, half antidote, which must be highly useful. Or is it maybe an ante-anecdote, an amusing story in advance (a.k.a. prophecy)?
Not surprisingly, such a useful word is in widespread use, apparently. 33,200 uses to be exact, according to Google. But no clear definition, according to antecdotal evidence.
Since we're now going to a lawsuit, these emails are going to be exhibits in court => public knowledge.
And by showing how poor they case would be, hopefully avoiding expensive hostilities.
I am sure he can differentiate between a personal e-mail and one sent because of your work.
Are you looking for a card, or a friend acknowledging that it is your birthday?
Playing chicken with Arrington might not be the best idea. From what I've seen in the past (posts like this) he is more than open about what people say in (assumed) private e-mails/phone calls.
My guess is they back off shortly. No one likes having their dirty laundry airing to the public. Thought they could push him around behind closed doors.
I'll make no secret of my own grudge with Arrington. Back in December, I wrote this comment - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=998318 - on Hacker News, rather critical of loud web acquisitions by Russian investors. Without so much as a heads up, to say nothing of a polite request for permission, this earned me a TechCrunch post: http://techcrunch.com/2009/12/20/are-hot-u-s-startups-the-ne... ...
Perhaps obviously but perhaps not, as a native Russian, and given what I had to say in that comment, I am not particularly interested in the kind of magnified exposure or attention that being linked on TechCrunch provides. It was a genuine statement of opinion that I more or less intended for the general HN audience. I don't really need it rubbed in the faces of these barons' hit-men that I, uh, slandered them. Sure, it's part and parcel of posting something to the public Internet, and, certainly, anyone searching Google can find my comment easily -- fine. But a little bit of consideration from Arrington's yellow journalism machine might have been helpful.
Until (my emphasis), means that they couldn't post simultaneously, nor before. I deduced then they were required to post after.
There most have been a counter statement elsewhere given your upvotes, sorry I missed it, what was it?
> And if you don’t mind, once you’ve read the excerpts, please let me know if you choose not to post on one and not the other or both, which of course we would love.
Now, IANAL but nowhere in there does it say to not post the excerpts.
It's just sad that is what it takes to be able to stand up to legal bullying.
(Not sure that legal bullying is happening here, but certainly Arrington can stand up to it, and most people can't.)
This goes double if you're calling yourself a publisher and you're working with major print entities.
Email is wonderful because people don't understand that an agreement in writing doesn't have to mean ink on paper.
"note that the story stems from an exclusive excerpt in FORTUNE of David Kirkpatrick’s new book The Facebook Effect."
"once you’ve read the excerpts, please let me know if you choose not to post on one and not the other or both"
The use of the words "exclusive" and "on" seem to make it pretty clear that he was supposed to post ABOUT the excerpts. Their intent may be antiquated, but I think it was clearly communicated.
I don't enjoy trying to ascertain what someone is trying to say, I guess I am not a fan of mysteries. Say it plainly and clearly, and these sort of mistakes do not go on.