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compiler and epicenter, two of the blogs in the wired blog network, accused jason calacanis earlier, of stealing one of their images, erasing their logo from it, and using it without proper attribution.

image: jason calacanis

while they were mocking him by writing that his how-to series (for which the image was used) should be called ‘how to steal’, and were pointing out the alleged hypocrisy in his actions by referring to an earlier calacanis post on scraper sites and plagiarism, what the wired blogs didn’t know was that jason hadn’t stolen the image and erased the logo, rather he just picked it up from a flickr stream where the original has been posted (the original image didn’t have a logo) and the lack of attribution was mere oversight not malicious intent.

what’s worse is that the image they used to accompany their article accusing jason of image theft, was an image taken from a fast company article without permission/attribution. by not doing their research and jumping to their keyboards before contacting jason to hear his side of the story or just asking for a correction, and by showing hypocrisy while blaming someone else for the same, the otherwise-smart blogs have managed to make complete fools of themselves.

both blogs have issued apologies, but the damage has been done.

unfortunately, our attempt to give calacanis a good-natured ribbing came off as more vindictive and mean-spirited than we intended. adding irony to insult, our post on epicenter initially used an image of calacanis that was itself lifted from another magazine, fast company. as a result, no matter how justified our initial complaint, we totally undercut our own case, and in the process made ourselves into an illustration of the very error we were trying to point out.

p.s. i have made the same mistake in the past, and in fact for many bloggers it’s a part of maturing into the field (i.e. we all make this mistake at least once, and therefore it’s good to read/write about it every now and again) but to see such high-profile blogs make this mistake is quite surprising.

Technorati Tags: wired, blogs, compiler, epicenter, calacanis, research, plagiarism, scraping, theft, apology