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Gawker Media: We’ll fuck you and if you complain our lawyers will fuck you too, thank you very much

This is a story of corporate arrogance.

sonambulist:

Why are you using an image from Flicker w/o attribution??

http://www.flickr.com/photos/uae-dragon/7692140/

Ben Popken, editor of the Gawker Media-owned consumerist blog:

I have now removed the link because we realize that this policy would be more trouble than it’s worth. If people want credit, they can ask for it. If people want their photo down, they can ask us. Otherwise, we’ll just go back to using the best photos we can find in order to illustrate our posts. If you guys want a bunch of ugly ass retarded stock photos all the time, you’re in the fucking wrong place.

It gets worse as you read on. For example, one of the comments by Ben Popken says Luckily Gawker Media Network has a crack legal team to do that kind of work. I guess Gawker Media figures they’re so big and almighty they don’t have to follow the rules anymore because they can bankrupt you in court.

It probably comes as a shock to many people that a blog company should use the same shady tactics that are routinely attributed to the established “old” media. But I guess it’s just how business is done. After all, business is war.

via Der Bildredakteur.

UPDATE Looks like this is an old story: They apologized two days ago. Some commenters, however, are not convinced. And over at flickr.com someone maintains that plagiarism is standars practice at Gawker.