

Arrington : "You’re Welcome, You Bastards" - whyleym
http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/13/youre-welcome-you-bastards/

======
nopal
This sounds like someone at Fortune trying to do something industrious and
then getting smacked by the higher-ups.

I wonder how many good ideas are quashed simply because of policy.

~~~
billclerico
a better technique would probably have been to apologize to techcrunch for
telling them the wrong thing, and then asking to take it down. as opposed to
telling arrington that he misunderstood.

~~~
megablast
That would be admitting you are wrong. You can never admit you are wrong, it
makes you look weak. If you look weak, you will not get anywhere.

This is really how some people think.

~~~
hitonagashi
If you admit you are wrong in paper/email, isn't it entirely possible that you
can then be quoted on it later in an accusation of negligence?

In this specific instance for example, wouldn't admitting you are wrong in an
email to Arrington immediately give him a solid case to defend himself with in
the event he chose not to take it down?

~~~
holygoat
Quite possibly… but which course of action is the most likely to succeed in
getting the post quietly pulled?

"Hey Michael, sorry about this, but some wires got crossed on our end. My bad.
Apparently…"

or

"Hey Michael, you screwed up. You better pull that post or else."

?

------
WestCoastJustin
Personally, I like that he is standing up for himself.

Playing chicken with Arrington might not be the best idea. From what I've seen
in the past (posts like this) he is more than open about what people say in
(assumed) private e-mails/phone calls.

My guess is they back off shortly. No one likes having their dirty laundry
airing to the public. Thought they could push him around behind closed doors.

~~~
abalashov
He's rather open with things that are assumed public but also assumed to
likely stay within the relatively small communities whence they germinated.
Not technically a violation of anything, but morally inconsiderate without
asking first.

I'll make no secret of my own grudge with Arrington. Back in December, I wrote
this comment - <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=998318> \- on Hacker News,
rather critical of loud web acquisitions by Russian investors. Without so much
as a heads up, to say nothing of a polite request for permission, this earned
me a TechCrunch post: [http://techcrunch.com/2009/12/20/are-hot-u-s-startups-
the-ne...](http://techcrunch.com/2009/12/20/are-hot-u-s-startups-the-new-
bling-for-rich-russians/) ...

Perhaps obviously but perhaps not, as a native Russian, and given what I had
to say in that comment, I am not particularly interested in the kind of
magnified exposure or attention that being linked on TechCrunch provides. It
was a genuine statement of opinion that I more or less intended for the
general HN audience. I don't really need it rubbed in the faces of these
barons' hit-men that I, uh, slandered them. Sure, it's part and parcel of
posting something to the public Internet, and, certainly, anyone searching
Google can find my comment easily -- fine. But a little bit of consideration
from Arrington's yellow journalism machine might have been helpful.

------
yosho
I'm going to side on Arrington on this one, even though sometimes, he likes to
make a big deal out of something small like removing a few words from his
post.

~~~
maukdaddy
Why? All he had to do was select a few sentences from the excerpts and edit
his post.

There's greater reward in the long run from acting like an adult, working well
with others, and not being a complete douche.

~~~
gte910h
Actually, I think you're wrong on both accounts. Fortune is jerking him
around. Calling them on it is not a bad thing, because a working relationship
on those terms will likely cost more than it will benefit.

Additionally, bloggers (and others in Attention Media) often make more from
douchebaggery than from evenhandedness. (And I honestly don't think Arrington
is being a douche here.

~~~
neilc
_Fortune is jerking him around._

I don't see how: at least in the emails posted, Fortune never authorizes
Arrington to post the full excerpt: they talk about writing a post "on the
book excerpts".

In any case, I think it is more likely to be a simple miscommunication. It
would be more mature for Arrington to simply concede that -- the excerpts are
their copyrighted material, and they have the right to control its
distribution. Getting all peeved about being woken up at 6:30 AM is silly.

~~~
ig1
Why is neilc's post getting downvoted ? - it seems a perfectly valid
contribution to the discussion.

~~~
danudey
On the one hand, yes, he has a valid point, but I'd guess the downvotes are
from people who feel that being unclear in your communication, then calling
repeatedly over and over to have you take down a post full of glowing praise
and preorder links on a hugely popular blog, then, when you refuse to edit
what is probably the best PR the book's had so far, threatening to sue you to
have you take it down.

Fortune could have said 'Sorry, we miscommunicated, could you trim down your
excerpts? Here are some example quotes you might want to include instead.'
They could have called him, and when they didn't get an answer, e-mailed him
instead. They could have asked nicely, or even looked on the bright side of
this amazing PR. Instead, they're being the biggest assholes they can be.

So yeah, there's a point to be made there, but I think Fortune's dickery is
overshadowing it.

~~~
jimbokun
'Sorry, we miscommunicated, could you trim down your excerpts? Here are some
example quotes you might want to include instead.'

Didn't they do that, minus the example quotes?

I'm honestly confused here.

~~~
ZachPruckowski
Expecting immediate action at six AM is a bit silly, as is calling three times
at that hour especially when you know the guy was up as late as 2 AM. I
realize it's a priority, but expecting 24-7 service when someone's doing you a
favor is a bit unreasonable.

------
mhartl
I don't support everything Michael Arrington does, but I love how he's never
afraid of a fight. People who think they pwn you just because they have a
couple of lawyers on retainer need to have threats like this shoved back in
their faces. Whether it's a bluff or not, kudos to Arrington for calling it.

------
huntero
"I’d love to chat with you about FORTUNE’s exclusive excerpt of David
Kirkpatrick’s book on Facebook"

"note that the story stems from an exclusive excerpt in FORTUNE of David
Kirkpatrick’s new book The Facebook Effect."

"once you’ve read the excerpts, please let me know if you choose not to post
on one and not the other or both"

The use of the words "exclusive" and "on" seem to make it pretty clear that he
was supposed to post ABOUT the excerpts. Their intent may be antiquated, but I
think it was clearly communicated.

~~~
megablast
Ask yourself, could they have been clearer? I mean, the fact that you are
looking for clues like certain words suggests that they certainly could have
written those emails better.

I don't enjoy trying to ascertain what someone is trying to say, I guess I am
not a fan of mysteries. Say it plainly and clearly, and these sort of mistakes
do not go on.

------
staunch
Arrington has a law degree, millions of dollars, and a massively popular
platform. He don't scare easy.

~~~
jimbokun
"Arrington has a law degree, millions of dollars, and a massively popular
platform."

It's just sad that is what it takes to be able to stand up to legal bullying.

(Not sure that legal bullying is happening here, but certainly Arrington can
stand up to it, and most people can't.)

------
petercooper
I've always felt that Arrington is a pragmatist and rationalist working in a
field made up of antiquated policies, back-stabbing PR people, and bizarre
ethics that it would take a lifetime to learn. As a pro-blogger, of sorts, I
can certainly sympathize.

------
mikecane
That Simon & Schuster got involved says something. Fortune probably paid to
run the excerpt -- a subsidiary right in the original book contract -- and
then goofed in asking for free pimping from Arrington in the manner that they
did. In other words, from the publisher's point of view, Arrington was getting
a free ride that S&S believed he should have paid for. Fortune's mistake.

------
invisible
The huge problem here is that they provided him all of this content and
neglected to say, "Slim this down and use no more than 115 words." They
neglected to give him a guideline to follow - and better yet, they should have
just given him what he needed to create the post and nothing more.

If someone comes to me and says, "Create a post based on all of this content,"
I am not going to take the time to pick and choose selectively what the reader
sees. Why should he take the time to inconvenience his readers?

------
SkyMarshal
Sometimes shit just happens. Let it go, move on.

The mistake here wasn't a miscommunication, it was in not realizing the cat
was out of the bag and just cutting your losses.

Just like you can't get unpregnant, you can't retract stuff once it's posted
on one of the web's top blogs. Fortune's type A control freak lawyers still
need to learn that it seems.

The correct response from Fortune:

"Oops, that's not what we intended, but oh well, lesson learned - next time be
more specific. Fuck it dude, lets go bowling."

~~~
JabavuAdams
> Just like you can't get unpregnant

Um. There are several legal and safe-enough ways to get "unpregnant".

~~~
antipaganda
Yes, but often there's no way to entirely remove the effects thereof from your
life thereafter.

------
RuadhanMc
It's a douche-douche situation.

------
mike463
Actually, all this hoopla got me to _read_ the excerpts, and I'm thinking
about getting the book (when it comes out).

so... then I wonder... Is this -- all of this -- clever advertising?

------
techiferous
This looks like a routine miscommunication that happens all the time in
business. Usually you just patch up the misunderstanding and move on. I think
Arrington loves to fight, so he escalated it. So what? Why is this on Hacker
News?

~~~
billswift
He didn't escalate it, he was just stubborn. The S&S lawyer escalated with
threats of a lawsuit. Then he countered by making the disagreement public.

~~~
techiferous
He escalated it by refusing to comply with a simple request to shorten the
original excerpts. Sure, it was not his fault that he would have had to fix
the blog post, but that would've been the civil and practical thing to do, in
my opinion.

------
acqq
Arrington is clearly wrong. It's clear that nobody told him to copy paste the
whole content, or gave him the permission. He just trolls now for more hits.
But he'd just lose if he'd come to court.

~~~
sjsivak
Maybe I misread the article, but it looks like the Fortune PR person never,
ever states that TechCrunch is only supposed to post portions of the excerpts.
This is the closest I could find:

> And if you don’t mind, once you’ve read the excerpts, please let me know if
> you choose not to post on one and not the other or both, which of course we
> would love.

Now, IANAL but nowhere in there does it say to not post the excerpts.

~~~
devinj
Copyright is reserved unless explicitly given. That is, what you have said may
be perfectly true, and Arrington could still be in the wrong. All they have to
have done is to not give him explicit permission.

~~~
MichaelSalib
Practically speaking, he is not in the wrong at all. What exactly do you think
Simon&Schuster can do, sue him? Can you imagine going up to a federal judge
and seeking an injunction for infringement for a guy who posted excerpts of a
book that were already online? What exactly are the damages?

------
abalashov
Arrington's just being Arrington. Nothing to be done about that.

Characteristically, he is ebulliently and abrasively assertive--indeed, at
times belligerent--of his right to publish whatever he feels like publishing
that day, and often frames it as a freedom of speech issue in a commercial
context.

This is a trait of, on the one hand, some of the world's most venerable
investigative journalists and insightful commentators, but, on the other hand,
also of the sleazy yellow press and fraternal unprincipled
viewership/readership/ratings whores with more ignoble motives.

As far as I can tell, TechCrunch is a slightly less toxic kind of Daily Mail.
It should not be controversial to any reasonable person that there is merit to
both sides of the issue insofar as lack of initial explicit prohibition on
publication of whole excerpts does not necessarily mean it was categorically
acceptable, nor does it mean that any demands for retroactive remedies from
Fortune are irrelevant. On the other hand, they are obviously both trying to
bully him and do something quite stupid.

------
edw519
I once had a friend who never forgot a birthday or holiday. I always got a
card from him. The problem was that it was always a card _that someone else
had sent him_. He scribbled over their message and wrote his own, then added a
lame message, "I'm doing my part by recycling."

This went on for years and I hated it. It wasn't funny anymore and I didn't
want to read what others had written to him.

Then it hit me... Who was reading all the cards I had sent him?

Michael Arrington is like that friend. I will probably never send him an email
because I don't want anyone else (much less the whole world) reading it.

~~~
swombat
That's a nice anecdote, but apart from the slanted attack on Michael Arrington
(which is obviously proving popular, looking at how many upvotes you got), I'm
not sure what it's got to do with the article at hand.

Michael Arrington might act like a douche sometimes (maybe even lots of the
time), but that's no reason not to treat this story on its merits, rather than
responding with a cute character attack.

~~~
edw519
_slanted attack on Michael Arrington_

 _cute character attack_

Not an attack, just an observation. And not of his character (which I am
hardly qualified to judge), just of his behavior in this particular post.

I dunno, posting word for word emails from someone else in a blog just seems a
little over the top to me, regardless of the reason. I don't know the merits
of this case, nor do I care.

The antecdote was to make a point (as antecdotes are usually meant to do).
It's the same as the office gossip. If he's saying/doing that to someone else,
what's he saying/doing about me?

~~~
danh
Thank you for introducing me to "antecdote". Brilliant word!

I suppose it is half anecdote, half antidote, which must be highly useful. Or
is it maybe an ante-anecdote, an amusing story in advance (a.k.a. prophecy)?

Not surprisingly, such a useful word is in widespread use, apparently. 33,200
uses to be exact, according to Google. But no clear definition, according to
antecdotal evidence.

~~~
mst
ITYM "the available antecdata" (the plural of anecdote is anecdata, doncha
know ...)

------
tkeller
Yeah, this seems like an unbiased account. I bet there's NO information he
left out of this story... Michael Arrington would never shade the truth.

------
ck2
Er, that's not an excerpt, that's like 4 (book) pages of text there.

Someone screwed up at Fortune and tried to backpedal.

------
FluidDjango
"today the book’s publisher Simon & Shuster got involved and is threatening
legal action."

Thanks. I needed a little more juice for my "death to the publishing industry"
mission. grrrr

------
scottshapiro
The reality is that TC posts 30+ articles per day. Articles from may 6 are now
part of a very, very long tail of TC articles that will barely dribble in
pageviews.

------
adolph
I'd bet that F O R T U N E wasn't legally in a position to offer the excerpts
for republishing.

------
stanleydrew
Reminds me of the kinds of posts we saw after the whole CrunchPad/JooJoo thing
fell apart.

~~~
rbanffy
Those were ugly in comparison.

And also ruined what could have been a very nice tablet platform.

~~~
danudey
A lack of quality control certainly didn't help.

~~~
rbanffy
I believe it became harder to secure funding after what Arrington published.

------
u48998
He has clearly quoted a lot of material, and so what if they made a mistake.
This is not how a blog post should be composed from the contents which are not
yours. I say TC is in error again and is just whining.

------
Amanjeev
Whatever you say, Arrignton has a point in this one. Web publishing is NOT the
same as Paper publishing. No wonder News papers are dying; they refuse to
merge and be innovative. Last cry always is 'copyright, copyright'!

------
TotlolRon
There was a copy write problem with the excerpts of the excerpts. Easy.

------
misuba
Reprints are contractual matters. Draw one up.

This goes double if you're calling yourself a publisher and you're working
with major print entities.

~~~
jjs
_Reprints are contractual matters. Draw one up._

Email is wonderful because people don't understand that an agreement _in
writing_ doesn't have to mean _ink on paper_.

------
kyro
This really shouldn't have 80+ votes. Someone please tell me why this is
interesting.

------
xiaoma
It really does appear that no good deed goes unpunished.

------
hapless
This is kind of a pissy, spiteful post. Why would anyone ever take this kind
of conflict public ? What does Arrington have to gain by going around jamming
his thumb in "old media" eyes ?

~~~
MikeCapone
> What does Arrington have to gain by going around jamming his thumb in "old
> media" eyes ?

Pageviews?

~~~
noarchy
This.

Arrington plays the game every bit as much as the rest of them. But he's
willing to expose how it works, from time to time, in order to make money for
himself. I find it entertaining, which is the point.

------
duairc
This has such a linkbait headline. This is some completely uninteresting drama
about, at least to me. But the headline is such that my impulse is to click on
it. I guess that makes me weak. But why do people upvote shit like this in the
first place? Do people really care about some squabble TechCrunch are having
with some other crowd? Is this really actually interesting to hackers? I
really hate when I come here and I see headlines like this on the front page.
This is not what I come here for.

~~~
alain94040
Although you are at -2, I'll answer you anyway. It's interesting to me because
it shows me how things really work inside.

Deconstructing stuff to find out how it works is part of hacking. Now I
understand better how Forture gets an exclusive and how they go around and ask
blogs to cover and promote it, and how bloggers think when they receive such
offers.

~~~
duairc
Well, thank you for responding anyway. I knew I was going to get downvoted for
that comment, I just felt I needed to say it. To be honest I have no idea who
Fortune are or what any of this is about really, so I was never in a position
to comment on whether or not this is interesting. Fair enough if it is
actually something interesting.

I just find linkbait headlines like that in really bad taste and it
disappoints me when I see a lot of them on the frontpage.

------
gluejar
Arrington's post with excerpts is exploitative of Fortune. Once you've read
the TechCrunch post, there's no value left in reading the Fortune articles.
Sure, it great for selling the book, but the magazine is screwed. On the
fortune side, they were not clear about whether they're promoting the book or
the magazine, since their editor is the author, so Arrington has a legitimate
excuse by arguing that he's just not very smart and was confused by the
distinctions.

