Inbetween picking away at some freelance webdesign work last night, a story crept from the sleepy backwaters of the internet, across LiveJournal, then Twitter, then Facebook, and was eventually spashed across the likes of the Wall Street Journal.
I’m not going to recount the entire story, because you can read all about it in fascinating (and often hilarious) detail elsewhere. Lets cut it down to the bare bones…
Girl writes a cooking article for her website.
Cooking magazine editor steals the cooking article.
Friend of girl spots article in magazine.
Girl emails editor, asking what has happened, anticipating mistake, and requesting donation to good cause to cover the oversight.
Editor responds hilariously unfavourably, ignorantly, and (as it turns out) suicidally.
Girl outs the story on her personal blog, along with email transcripts.
The entire internet lights the blue touch paper, outs the editor, brings down the magazine website, outs all the copyright infringements in the magazine’s history, and effectively causesterminal damage to the magazine’s brand (the facebook page is pretty entertaining reading)
By far the most interesting part of the entire story for me has been the reaction of “the internet” to the story. I’m wondering if a corner has been turned in terms of the general internet populance’s understanding of content ownership, and the importance of it.
The speed with which the volume of thestory grew, and the distance it covered in the first few hours was astonishing.
If anything it’s an affirmation that the community of those of us who write online - be that personal blogs or otherwise - is still alive and well. Last night it almost seemed like a horn was blown across the internet, and the blogging communitystood up to be counted.
So think about that - next time you’re sat somewhere, toiling away on a blog post that you’re expecting nobody will read - there are thousands of us out here. All you need to do is reach out to us. We are here.