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Comment by yalurker | Hacker News Reader

Wow, reading this didn't give me any sympathy for her at all. I'm reminded of the episode of South Park where Cartman feels bad only about getting punished, no actual guilt or remorse for his crime, and fails to understand how the other kids can feel bad in any way other than because of punishment.

She steals someone else's work, gets caught and sends an arrogant, rude email with absurd claims (web is public domain) and then when she is hit with the internet backlash, she writes a post that it's not her fault because she was overworked and throws in an insincere apology where she still clearly doesn't believe she did anything wrong ("I think I did a nice job for you").

The original article didn't irk me nearly as much as her rebuttal. Quite frankly, if this really does put them out of business, they deserve it.

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If that list of plagiarized articles is accurate, she certainly seemed to have it coming, but you'll have to forgive me if I can't feel awesome about the victory of asymmetrical internet mob justice over a small-time regional magazine.

God forbid they ever smell blood in the water you're swimming in.

Actually the so-called "mob justice" was a HUGE FAVOR. I'll explain.

How would you feel if your start-up was ripped off? Would you want HN people to rally around you, or would that be "mob justice"?

And what if it turned out the same people were also ripping off, say, Microsoft and Apple and several other large corporations?

If everyone had been so civil and polite, they wouldn't have felt pressured to shut down.

I don't know about you, but I'll take Facebook comments and phone calls over getting served with papers from half a dozen massive legal departments any day.

Lawsuits are expensive even when you're innocent.

If the penalties are draconian for not even distributing but just "making available" mp3s with NO commercial intentions whatsoever, what do you think the penalties are going to look like for massive distribution of hundreds or thousands of discrete willful infringements for profit?

This so-called mob justice is immeasurably nicer than what the actual legal system would have done to them.

MP3s are different, they're covered by a specific law (the Digital Millennium Copyright Act) created at the behest of the record companies and it wouldn't apply here.

While there may be some elements of criminal law that might apply, in all probability this would have been a straight civil case rather than a criminal matter with the writers claiming damages for the work published without permission. She could have accepted liability (or even not done so), paid them (which would likely have been relatively limited given the pieces she's used - it's not like she's been grabbing major scoops from the NYT) and moved on.

The chances are that the writers would be no more interested in racking up legal bills that she would so costs there would have been minimal. Basically she gives each one of them a few hundred dollars, they give her a letter saying it's OK to run the piece.

She was in the wrong but the punishment (essentially being forced out of business) doesn't really fit the "crime" and the legal remedies would have been far easier on her than the mob was.

It would not have been kind to them.

Nobody "forced" them out of business, they voluntarily quit when they realized their sham was exposed.

In aggregate, their behavior easily qualified as multiple felonies; and damages alone would most likely have been ruinous.

I know I would not want to roll those dice.

So I think you're mistaken about essentially everything you said above.

Phoning to say "you're an utter asshole", while not a nice thing to do, is still not exactly the same as lynching someone. Tone down the hyperbole a bit, please.

Sure, but thousands of people phoning in to say “you’re an utter asshole” — leading to the site’s closure — isn’t simply “not a nice thing to do,” though.

They got what they deserved, but if it ain’t “mob justice,” I don’t know what else to call it. The Internet, en masse, certainly has a pulse and life of it’s own.

Mobs don't always bring justice, but I have trouble feeling bad when they do. I mean, so far this mob has a better record than the legal system does in bringing copyright claims to a reasonable conclusion, so it's not as though there's a bulletproof alternative.

> Sure, but thousands of people phoning in to say “you’re an utter asshole” — leading to the site’s closure

That isn't why they closed.

Think what would have happened to them if they stayed open, from the ACTUAL non-mob-justice legal system.

It's in my comment just a bit up:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1912643

I completely lost any possible sympathy for her when she posted this to Facebook, a day or so after the story broke:

------------

Hi Folks!

Well, here I am with egg on my face! I did apologise to Monica via email, but aparently it wasnt enough for her. To all of you, thank you for your interest in Cooks Source and Again, to Monica, I am sorry -- my bad! You did find a way to get your "pound of flesh..." we used to have 110 "friends," we now have 1,870... wow!

Best to all, Judith

For what it's worth, the person who wrote that was not the real Judith--someone created a fake Facebook account and made several posts like (and including) this one.

Really? This page looks pretty legitimate: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Cooks-Source-Magazine/19699419...

They have postings going back to December 2009.

In the wall area, if you click on "Filters" and then "Just Cooks Source Magazine", you'll see that post I mentioned, which Facebook says originates from the Cooks Source Magazine Facebook page.

Maybe I'm getting confused somehow?

Interesting--the Cooks Source page you linked is indeed the official group (created long before this debacle), and that appears to be a post from the group itself (so it is probably the real Judith). That being said, when this story went viral someone created a fake Judith profile and proceeded to troll everyone by posting extremely similar statements simultaneously apologizing and defending her stance.

Regardless, I think we can all agree this person is clearly in the wrong industry and still has little personal accountability for her mistakes.

"The original article didn't irk me nearly as much as her rebuttal. Quite frankly, if this really does put them out of business, they deserve it."

That's exactly what I thought upon reading this. And the reference to South Park is gold :-)

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> Maybe "she" deserves a serious wake-up call, but "they" most certainly do not.

Being a two-person operation is probably why they ripped off most if not all of their content.

"Craftier Internet denizens started to research more of Cooks Source's publications, discovering that other articles could be lifted from The Food Network, Martha Stewart, NPR and even Disney."

http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/299928

Not just articles, but also photos, discovered with TinEye.

"Because the writer in question had a copyright on her website where the article can be found, the content of the website is under copyright law."

Ouch. Surely there must be a better source than some junk written by a clueless "digital journalist" with the sole purpose of flooding search engines?

Wade through at your leisure.

http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=196994196748&topic...

Same primary source regardless of what outlet covers it.

NPR: http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2010/11/05/131091599/the-...

Economist: "A host of Facebook and other denizens have traced over 100 other articles that have appeared in the magazine to The Food Network, NPR, Martha Stewart, Sunset, and others. A Google Docs spreadsheet maintains the list."

http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2010/11/internet_sham...

The list:

https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AmTaIPHPnkSedGFhbHo...

Over 160 entries just from recent issues that people could find copies of.

Out of curiosity, how do you suppose that spreadsheet was created?

How would one go about finding the sources en masse from a set of articles? What tools would be used?

Google?

It doesn't sound like they really had employees and it's not as though they were compensating external writers fairly either!

I'm all for small businesses and these underdog publications, but this individual comes across as having had it coming and has an awful attitude.

If the interest is there from her audience, then someone will step in to fill that void, and hopefully they'll have more sense when it comes to fairly sourcing content for a new magazine.

She appears to be some sort of owner as well as editor. And it appears only two people actually make money from that magazine - the other may also be an owner-type.

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