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Re: Joke Stealers
Posted By: Issachar, on host 207.30.27.2
Date: Friday, August 10, 2001, at 12:50:43
In Reply To: Re: Joke Stealers posted by Howard on Friday, August 10, 2001, at 11:39:19:

> Many moons ago, when I was writing sports for the local daily, I referred to the HS basketball team as "operating like a well-oiled machine." Now, I'm not claiming to have originated the expression, but I had never heard it before. The next evening, I heard a local broadcaster say that the college team was "like a well-oiled machine." My first reaction was, "Hey he read my article." My next thought was, "Hey, he's stealing my stuff."

I used to work for www.necxdirect.com, writing product descriptions for computer components and such-like stuff. Once, while browsing eBay, I read an oddly-familiar seeming description for a Pentium III processor that someone had put up for auction. Sho'nuff, it was copied-and-pasted from the description I'd written for NECX just days beforehand.

I e-mailed the seller, identified myself as the writer, and told him that although IANAL, it was likely that his use of that content was illegal. Also, not everything in my original write-up applied to the particular Pentium III model that he was selling, so I showed him how he was using an inaccurate description for the item he was selling. All in all though, it felt kind of good to think that someone went to *our* web site to grab content for a computer product like that.

Iss "imagine getting to surf AnandTech, Ars Technica and Tom's Hardware and call it work-related research!" achar

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