Contact
Subscribe


Paulie Gatto In Cyberspace

May 7, 2009
By .
Irksome, Meta

The scene from The Godfather, in which the weasel who would go on to betray Don Corleone dreams of stealing the wedding purse:

"Madon', if this was somebody else's wedding, sfortunato!"

came to mind when I read of USLaw.com legal blogs, a site whose main purpose seems to be lifting and reprinting, without permission, copyrighted material written by lawyers.

Of course while Gatto was a traitor, he lacked the guts (or perhaps the stupidity) to steal from dangerous people in such a blatant and disrespectful fashion.  And so Connie Corleone's wedding purse was safe.

Whoever runs USLaw.com legal blogs, you're a brave man.  Te salud!

Last 5 posts by Patrick

3 Comments
Tags

2 Comments

  1. Ken  •  May 7, 2009 @4:40 pm

    "Greg Chase", the sock puppet USLaw has put up to defend it, emailed me personally — twice — after I commented on Scott's site about this. Aside from railing about how unfair it is for Scott to decide who can comment on his blog, "Greg Chase" also argued that what USLaw is doing is just like taking advantage of blogs' RSS feeds, or something.

    Here's the clear difference: USLaw doesn't merely print an excerpt of blog entries, then link to the original blog posts. USLaw slurps up a blog's entire content and hosts ALL OF IT on the USLaw site under the USLaw URL. If you want to go the original post on the original blog, you have to look at the very end of the USLAW copy of it for a small link. Also, USLaw superimposes its own logo over the logo of at least some of the bloggers whose work it copies.

    There's been a huge upsurge in internet lawyer marketing activity recently it seems. This is exactly why we should be vigilant about it.

  2. shg  •  May 9, 2009 @11:59 am

    Dontcha love the fact that this mutt steals from us and I won't let him post manifesto after manifesto to explain why it's his right to steal?

    Of course, when I allowed him to post again, he got smart and decided to go elsewhere. Maybe all those lawyers trying to rip his throad out through the computer screen gave rise to concern? Of course, it didn't change his view, which remains that he is entitled to steal our content, as well as capitalize on it, alter it, and enjoy it. And he's doing us a favor by doing so. We should feel honored.

1 Trackback