I really had no intention of chiming in, other then commenting on others blogs, on the whole blogwar between Cheese and Crackers and Austins Blog (hat tip to Brain Shavings, where I first ran across the story). But, the more I ran across it, the more pissed off I got. And, hey, a blog is the place for writing ones thoughts. Brain Shavings pointed me towards one of the great new sites, Hundred Percenter, to this, Instarage:
"You are a little bastard. You stole Margolis’ image from here.
"Then you emailed Glenn Reynolds and are getting all Matt’s traffic.""Absolutely despicable."
Jordan Golson
Now, there is no doubt Austin was wrong. Very wrong. He apparently did this, basically bandwith theft and, as far as the blogosphere goes, against our code of conduct. Hell, I will link a left wing site I am slamming. It is the Code.
But, Austin is 13. And, even if he was of adult age, a nice email explaining the situation would have been the appropriate, and adult thing, to do. How many times have Right Wing sites slammed Lefties for their conduct, and now this is done to Austin? I remember reading, maybe a month ago, that Backcountry Conservative had an issue with a similar situation (sorry, it is in his archives, and I cannot seem to find the correct search term). It was handled in an adult manner. Austin was offered an apology for calling him a bastard. How about one for treating him with complete disrespect? How about one for being an azzhole to him?
At this point, I plan to stop reading anyone elses sites about it. Have seen about 10 or so. Just gets me madder and madder. However, Beth at My Vast Right Wing Conspiracy has a new term: Jordaning. I give 100% credit to Beth, now and in perpetuity.
Come back, Austin, if you are out there. Some of us are more then willing to help you in an adult manner. I may not get the traffic that alot of others get, but, I am pretty blog savvy, and more then willing to let you in on the rules and regs and stuff of blogging. Don’t give in. Tell your Mom to let you blog again.
A bit of an addition: I was a wee bit PO’d when I was writing this last night. I recieved a few emails from Jordan, and, I want to lay a little bit more info out, in the sake of fairness.
First, I in no way endorse what Austin was doing. He has been doing it for awhile, and has been told he needed to stop it on several occasions. It wasn’t like it was one picture, it was many. He wasn’t giving the proper credit to where the pictures came from. Austin is the only one who could answer why he kept doing it. But, doesn’t matter. He did it.
What has upset me, and others, is the language and attitude used towards a 13 year old. Should he have been taught a lesson over these repeated violations? Hell yes. But not like that, if you have read the whole thing at Hundred Percenter. Jordan has apologized, there is nothing we can do about Austin unless he reopens his site, since he has no published email address. Let’s all take a deep breath, and move on.
Woops, part got cut out, not sure what button I keep hitting on the laptop. Well, it went something like this. We all have said things to others that we aren’t that proud of, despite the info we were giving out being correct. For instance, I teed off on a lib about 6 months ago on a forum, thinking it was someone using a different screen name. I was wrong. The message was correct, but the delivery was not very nice. Let’s take that kind of thing into consideration while when we bash Jordan, and let it be between him and Austin.
Yes, there are right wingers that need to be banned from the sphere as well. Hell, I screwed up last night with my plastic fantastic post. I tracked back to you but failed to provide a link. In fact, I forgot to provide about 10 links. Digger made a slight mention of it, I fixed the problem (‘cept you, I know you wuv me anyways. I just noticed it and I’ll fix it in a sec.), no more bitching.
Why can’t people just chill?
I appreciate the TB. I usually just ignore it when stuff like that happens, unless someone is quoting me, or pulled a story that comes from somewhere unusual. I have alerted a few folks that when they do a quick post, the original link often gets imbedded.
I would love to send Austin an email of encouregement, but his email is not on the site. Shame.
One part that bothered me was that Jordan tried to beat the kid up with all sorts of copyright nonsense, essentially threatening him. B4B didn’t have any unique material of their own, they just re-assembled pictures that everyone was linking without credit, since nobody realy knew who’s pictures they were.
I’m catching this issues way late, but like you, I was highly irritated at how Jordan and Margolis handled the situation, though at least Matt eventually tried to do the right thing.
In my mind though, it was “too little, too late.”
I just dropped blogs for bush and gopbloggers from my blogroll. As I said on my blog, “I may not be blessed with a lot of class, but there are some lines even I won’t cross.”