> Someone has to explain to me exactly what we should have done differently here.
Since you asked:
Ask the original author if it would be ok to include his contribution in your derived work.
> I honestly [] absolutely no idea what we should have done differently here to illustrate an interesting fact with our readers and reference the original source (we did that twice in the article...even with his full name (a screenshot of which he conveniently didn't include in his post))...and still he comes out guns blazing like he wrote a full-on opinion piece and we decided to just copy/paste.
Crediting someone does not automatically give you the right to copy their work without their permission. That's a misplaced sense of entitlement, and one I would definitely not accept from a site with the visibility of TNW.
Would it be ok with you if I copied TNW and linked back to your pages to credit you? No? Why not? Where would you draw the line of what is acceptable and what is not?
Oh, and you did just copy/paste.
> We work immensely ha[r]d to product original content
So don't cut-and-paste interesting bits you find on the web.
> I'm honestly amazed that this is crawling up Hacker News quite frankly.
The Next Web is featured on HN quite frequently, so it is logical that any criticism of your website would feature here as well. And I wouldn't call it crawling, you've got top billing.
I'm honestly amazed that you did this, and how utterly wrong your stance is. For a person associated with a publication I would expect a much higher level of knowledge of things like 'how to cite' and 'how to attribute' and maybe a dash of copyright 101. How hard is it to ask someone if you can use their stuff? Just ask, worst case they'll say no and then you can always simply link to them to make your point. It's not like he's suing you for $125K per copy, he's just upset that you didn't have the common courtesy to ask.
The fact that people usually are not upset and that people don't care does not change a thing with respect to what's right or not and asking is the normal thing to do.
I've had my content cut-and-pasted so often that I no longer care but it seems to me that if you want to write original content you should simply write rather than try to pick up which bits are trending on certain websites to re-package those for a larger audience. Besides the fact that it does not say much for how you produce your content it also shows that you don't even bother to do your own fact checking. You could easily be set up to parrot incorrect data like this.
Do your own homework, write your own text supported by facts that you have researched yourself and cite your sources. That is original content.
I never understood the appeal of the TNW. Of the articles that did make it to the HN front page that I've seen, I've always thought the quality of the TNW's content was quite low. So I guess what's transpired today is not much of a surprise to me.
Since you asked:
Ask the original author if it would be ok to include his contribution in your derived work.
> I honestly [] absolutely no idea what we should have done differently here to illustrate an interesting fact with our readers and reference the original source (we did that twice in the article...even with his full name (a screenshot of which he conveniently didn't include in his post))...and still he comes out guns blazing like he wrote a full-on opinion piece and we decided to just copy/paste.
Crediting someone does not automatically give you the right to copy their work without their permission. That's a misplaced sense of entitlement, and one I would definitely not accept from a site with the visibility of TNW.
Would it be ok with you if I copied TNW and linked back to your pages to credit you? No? Why not? Where would you draw the line of what is acceptable and what is not?
Oh, and you did just copy/paste.
> We work immensely ha[r]d to product original content
So don't cut-and-paste interesting bits you find on the web.
> I'm honestly amazed that this is crawling up Hacker News quite frankly.
The Next Web is featured on HN quite frequently, so it is logical that any criticism of your website would feature here as well. And I wouldn't call it crawling, you've got top billing.
I'm honestly amazed that you did this, and how utterly wrong your stance is. For a person associated with a publication I would expect a much higher level of knowledge of things like 'how to cite' and 'how to attribute' and maybe a dash of copyright 101. How hard is it to ask someone if you can use their stuff? Just ask, worst case they'll say no and then you can always simply link to them to make your point. It's not like he's suing you for $125K per copy, he's just upset that you didn't have the common courtesy to ask.
The fact that people usually are not upset and that people don't care does not change a thing with respect to what's right or not and asking is the normal thing to do.
I've had my content cut-and-pasted so often that I no longer care but it seems to me that if you want to write original content you should simply write rather than try to pick up which bits are trending on certain websites to re-package those for a larger audience. Besides the fact that it does not say much for how you produce your content it also shows that you don't even bother to do your own fact checking. You could easily be set up to parrot incorrect data like this.
Do your own homework, write your own text supported by facts that you have researched yourself and cite your sources. That is original content.