Update On The Chuck Woolery Drama

So, if you missed the earlier Thanksgiving drama, when we caught Chuck Woolery stealing content from us and countless others, you need to catch up right here, because DAYUM there was some drama.

Ok – so now you’re caught up with what happened, but HOLY MOLY so much has happened since, y’all.

You’ll recall from the original post that as of the time that post went up on this past Friday morning, Chuck and his sidekick Mark still hadn’t removed any of our 30+ posts that they’d lifted from us, word for word, without permission or proper attribution.  Then, that same afternoon, they apparently got hacked for a while (karma, maybe?).  Once they were back up and running, this happened:

Did you get a load of that?  He’s trying to make US seem unreasonable for not being OK with him stealing our stuff.  The dig about it being an “emergency” and the absolute nonsense about us not giving credit to others – WOW.  I couldn’t live with myself if we operated in the way that he does.  It is outright theft.

But guess what started happening that same evening?  Miraculously, at the bottom of every post they’re stealing from others (and yes, they continue to steal from others), there’s an ACTIVE HYPERLINK to the original source.  It’s still useless to the content creators of course, since Chuck and Mark are still pretending that the content was “first reported by” the creator and not actually CREATED by the creator, but it’s a step in the right direction.  But scroll back to before November 24th, and every single post of their trending news section includes UNCLICKABLE links. They still don’t get it.  Which is why this other tweet from Mark in response to one of his followers was so absolutely mindblowingly ridiculous:

CAN YOU EVEN BELIEVE THAT?  He thinks they were promoting our work???  OMG.

If he wanted to promote our work, or simply get our message out to the masses as he claims, he would have simply LINKED TO OUR POSTS ON OUR SITE.  But nope – he copied/pasted 30+ posts of ours (and continues to do the same to countless others), and doesn’t even provide so much as a link back to us. That’s not promotion.  That’s self-serving assholery of the highest order.  That’s THEFT.

A second option, if in fact he wanted to promote our work or get the message out, would be to slap an “According to this” at the top of each post with a hyperlink back to us, so it’s clear right from the beginning of the post that it’s NOT HIS ORIGINAL CONTENT, and then instead of copying/pasting the whole post, he could paste a few lines of the post with a “click here to read more” link back to our site.  That’s what proper attribution looks like.  That’s what ethical content creation looks like.  That’s what promoting someone else’s work looks like.  But nope!  They’d just rather steal and profit off the work of others.

We had a bunch of people on Facebook who have no idea how copyrighted work actually WORKS trying to implore us to “take the high ground” and just not even make a big deal about this because we’re “all on the same team,” as the tweeter above said. I couldn’t believe it.  People want us to just ignore outright theft simply because the perpetrators claim to be on the same side of the ideological line? Please.  If you haven’t read the outrageousness from some of our very own followers, take a few minutes to browse right here.  It’s absolutely unreal.  Thankfully, we have followers who DO get it.  Check out these!

Andrea hasn’t responded to Jerry or me.  Huh.

And as always, clever and competent Roxanne has our backs. And her analogy is perfect.

So much more where that came from – on both sides – people who totally get it, and the morons who think we should just accept being stolen from without complaining.

Anyway, I spent some time this weekend getting in touch with folks from the Daily Wire, the Daily Caller, the Gateway Pundit, and others to let them know that their hard work had been stolen by Chuck and Mark as well, and wouldn’t you know it – they were rightfully outraged too, and plan to put an end to their content being stolen as well.  You know why?  BECAUSE THEY KNOW IT’S STEALING.  They understand that and they get it. Unlike a bunch of the keyboard warriors on Facebook who were spouting off about things they clearly didn’t understand at all.

There are folks out there who wonder why we called out Chuck and Mark publicly.  The answer is simple.  Anyone who reads their site, who stumbles upon it by accident, or who follows it religiously, needs to know the “blunt force truth” about it.  And the two thieves whose names and likenesses are branding the Blunt Force Truth site don’t deserve for their shady practices to be hidden from the public.

I’m relieved that we don’t have to pursue this further, and that they’ve removed our content (at least I HOPE it’s all removed now), and I hope that others continue to call them out.  Enough is enough.