The Drama Continues

What you’re about to read (if you choose to read it) is meant to serve as documentation and a record of an ongoing personal situation which involves a prominent conservative.  When we’ve written about this previously, some of you have been angry that it’s been a rather public battle.  We’re not particularly happy about that either, but it is what it is.  If you don’t like reading about our personal drama, or if you plan to criticize us for posting our personal drama on our site, or if you don’t understand the first thing about copyright infringement and web publishing but still want to bitch at us about it, then just stop right here and move along.  This post isn’t for you.

I’m serious.  Now’s your chance to bail.  Don’t start reading this and then get all mad that it’s long and personal and full of drama.  It is absolutely all of those things, and you’re being given fair warning to look away.

This post (in addition to serving as a record of what’s happened) is for the people who’ve been following the story with interest and support, who care about conservatives treating each other fairly, and who care about the truth.  If you’re one of those people, thank you for understanding, for supporting the rights of authors to get proper credit for their work, and for caring about the integrity of other conservatives.

Now then.

I’d really hoped that the whole Chuck Woolery story had run its course, y’all. I really did.

If you’re unfamiliar with the drama, get caught up right here. In a nutshell, Chuck Woolery and his sidekick Mark Young have a website called Blunt Force Truth (ironic, given the way they operate it), and in addition to posting their own podcasts, they have a Trending News section of the site, where they post (as you’d expect) trending news.

The problem is, 99% of their trending news stories are copied and pasted, in their entirety, from other sources.  In our case, they reprinted our full posts (including headlines, thumbnails, everything) without seeking permission first, and we can only assume the same is true for all of their other sources. And until we discovered this on Thanksgiving and called them out for stealing 30+ stories from US, they posted all those stories with a non-clickable link at the BOTTOM of each post, as the only form of attribution.

If you know anything about copyright or website publishing at all, you know this is essentially theft. And the kicker? The way they “credited” the original source was to say, “First reported by” and then to show a non-clickable link.

Like this:

That’s what they thought was appropriate attribution. No quotes around the content.  No links.  Nothing but an unclickable footnote with an absurd “first reported by” statement in parentheses.

So imagine that you’re just a casual reader who sees the headline “Ivanka Trump to Fox and Friends: I Didn’t Expect This Level Of Viciousness in Washington DC” and you click to that page above.  You’re going to read that entire article, assume that it’s written by the site you’re reading it on, and you’ll likely pay little to no attention to the fact that it was actually written by someone at Mediaite.  And even if you DO notice that, the link shown isn’t active, so you’re likely not going to bother to copy/paste it and visit the REAL source of the post you just read.  Mediaite’s writer, who likely earns a living based on the traffic his/her posts get on Mediaite, now has to compete with his/her OWN POST, reprinted by Chuck and Mark as their own.

That’s how every single story in their Trending News section looked until Thanksgiving day, when we apparently shamed them into at least using active links.  They’re still copying/pasting entire posts as their own, but at least there’s a link to the original content creators now.  A tiny improvement, but an improvement all the same.

Long story short – we called them out, demanded they remove our posts from their site completely, and Chuck’s sidekick tried to make US out to be the bad guys.  Yup.  That really happened. 

Regardless, we thought that was the end of it, and moved on.

Until earlier this week.

Sidekick Mark tweeted out a link to a post he wrote about the drama, and tagged us in it.  And the amount of arrogance and condescension in it is just mind-blowing.

Now, even though it’s not our style at all to post stories without proper attribution, it seems appropriate to do that in this instance, because HOLY CRAP.

Hold on to your hats.  Here it goes.

Like many conservative web sites, Blunt Force Truth provides readers with a mix of original content from our staff as well as reposting relevant stories from around the web.

Well, that’s mostly true.  Many conservative sites do have a mix of content.  But sites that have Actual Integrity properly credit their sources and don’t republish entire posts written by others.  Therein lies the difference.

We do this in an effort to push the message of conservatism out to as many people as possible. Our belief is that it is the message that matters, not the messenger. Blunt Force Truth is produced as a labor of love and financed by Chuck Woolery and me personally. We provide all our content free to any other website that wishes to use it and you will find our work on many places around the web.

This is utter nonsense.  If the message matters so much, they would simply use their social media platforms to SHARE links to the websites they’re currently stealing from.  But they don’t do that, because then they don’t benefit personally.  A “labor of love” involves actual labor – not copying and pasting other people’s hard work and displaying it as your own, with barely a footnote of “credit” at the bottom of each post (which no one reads, and even if they DID read it, Chuck and Mark made sure – prior to November 24th – that no one could click to the source.)  That’s neat that they offer their content for free to people who want to use it. But their content is not the written word.  It’s podcasts.  It’s of huge benefit to them to have their audio clips shared widely.  When you share and listen to their podcast, it’s clearly THEIRS.  There’s no confusion about that.  When they steal other people’s written words and offer a piddly footnote at the end as the only evidence that someone else wrote it, people miss the footnote altogether, and assume the content was written by Chuck/Mark.

NOT OK.

One of our new people reposted several articles from a site unknown by us called Chicks on the Right.  Our staffer thought that the writers had some useful and interesting content to share and decided to do so, of course with full attribution given to their stories.

Nope.  “Full attribution” means that it says BEFORE THE POST BEGINS (or within the first sentence or two) that it was written by US.  It includes a clickable link to our site.  They did neither of those things.

In other words, they made it as difficult as possible for a reader to know where the content was actually from, and as easy as possible for a reader to assume it was from THEM.

Over the Thanksgiving holiday, some observant followers reached out to me on Twitter to inform me that people from the “Chicks” website were attacking Chuck Woolery on Twitter. I had no idea who they were, but immediately investigated and did indeed find them to be attacking him, claiming we were stealing content. The issue as I understand it was they wanted a link to their site.

No.  The issues were:

1.  We did not give them permission to republish our posts in their entirety.
2.  There was no attribution at the beginning of each post to indicate that it was not their original content.
3.  There was no active link back to us, the actual content creators.

It seems like there’s a word for that.  Oh I know! Stealing.

I must tell you I was horrified to see people attacking a man that has become a national icon of conservatism and everything decent. Chuck Woolery has sacrificed so much by stepping forward as a Hollywood conservative and Christian.

He bravely served this nation aboard the USS Enterprise during the Bay of Pigs, his ship and crew standing between Cuba and Soviet navy destroyers. He has upheld conservative causes across the nation, given his own time and money to so many, and has supported conservative candidates who he felt would return this nation to its constitutional roots. I have been best friends with Chuck for over 20 years. During this time, he has demonstrated a quiet dignity and honesty that I have rarely witnessed in others.

All that is well and good.  Great, in fact.  I’m grateful for Chuck’s service.  But none of that gives him or the people working for him the right to help himself/themselves to our content without proper attribution or permission.

Chuck, with nearly ten times the following as the combined “Chick” Twitter account, truthfully cannot monitor all of the thousands of tweets sent to him daily. And he honestly does not engage with the countless people who tweet hate and destruction towards him, especially if he thinks he is punching down. Chuck is just not a bully.

He doesn’t need to be a bully.  He’s got Mark for that, clearly.  And while Mark is obviously proud of their twitter following, it appears that we have him beat on Facebook.  By kind of a lot.  FYI.  Not sure why that matters whatsoever, but since he seems to want to compare numbers…

Once I was made aware of this Twitter storm, I addressed it immediately, informing them that if they did not want our audience (which is much larger) reading their information we would be happy to take it down. I went on to apologize for the issue and let them know I would get someone on our staff to deal with it, as neither Chuck nor I actually post the stories.

It’s really important, apparently, for Mark to make it clear to everyone that their following is MUCH LARGER than ours. Please make a note of that if you would, because it’s critical to Mark that you know that.

We’d love to have their gigantically huge audience reading our information.  But we’d also like that gigantically huge audience to know it’s OURS.  It’s this whole pesky copyright thing.

And yes, he did kind of sort of apologize.  You can see that conversation right here. It was actually rather laughable.

And yes, they did take the posts down.  And wouldn’t you know it?  They also started including CLICKABLE LINKS on all of the content they copy and paste from others.  That very same day, even! That’s still unbelievably lame and unhelpful to the content creators, but it’s at least marginally more than they were originally doing.  (Don’t believe me?  Look at any post in their Trending News section prior to November 23rd.)

The other thing that they started doing AS OF THE DAY MARK WROTE THIS RIDICULOUS DIATRIBE, is saying who WROTE the original content at the bottom of each post, instead of the meaningless, “First reported by” nonsense.

Essentially, that’s an admission that they knew they were being SUPER shady before, and now they’re just being slightly less shady.  Baby steps.

For some reason this was not a sufficient answer and they continued to tweet repeatedly about how Chuck Woolery is a thief, even though they had been informed that Chuck did not even know who they were.

Yes – we did continue to tweet RESPONSES to all of their sheep followers who couldn’t understand what was really happening, particularly given that Mark was trying to paint US as the bad guys.

To further fuel this unexplainable outrage, the “Chicks” decided to post 2 articles (using Chuck Woolery in the headline to attract readers) filled with lies, innuendo and personal attacks on both Chuck Woolery and myself. We can only speculate that the headline of Continuing Drama with Chuck Woolery was intended to attract readers to their website, since there was no “drama” as they had never communicated with Chuck at any time.

“Unexplainable outrage?”  Yeah – we’re totes insane for caring about the fact that our work was stolen.

Chuck and Mark’s faces are plastered all over their website.  Whether they like it or not, they are the face of their brand.  They are accountable for the material on the website.  It’s not like we have Chuck Woolery’s personal cell number.  We communicated with him and Mark in the only way we knew how – via Twitter, and via our own website to tell the story.

We live in a time when the division between the left and the right is at an all time high, where saying “Make America Great Again” is considered hate speech. The Chicks on the Right seem to be doing good work and have some good content. It thrills us at Blunt Force Truth to see more women taking up the conservative mantle.

We have no idea what triggered such an angry reaction from you or what else is happening in your lives that could have played into this highly inappropriate response. Ask many well-known conservative women about their opinion and interactions with Chuck Woolery or myself and you will find nothing but good things. There are no Al Franken or John Conyers stories lurking in our past.

That after all of this, they still have “no idea” what triggered our angry reaction is just laughable.  I’m not sure how much clearer we can be.  WE DIDN’T WANT OUR CONTENT STOLEN FOR THEIR PERSONAL BENEFIT.

I’m not sure how this changed into a conversation about sexual misconduct, but we’re not suggesting that Mark and Chuck are anything like Al Franken or John Conyers.  I’ve no reason to believe they’re anything but lovely to women in their interactions with them.  But that’s not the issue.  The issue is how they take other people’s work without permission, and post it as their own.

To the Chicks on the Right, if we have somehow offended you, you have our deepest apology. Blunt Force Truth News is only 5 months old, and although the growth has been phenomenal and humbling, we are still learning.

Indeed.  I’m glad that we’ve now taught you the importance of including active links when you provide attribution to your sources, and that we’ve taught you how to credit authors when you use their material.  The problem, however, is that you’re still lifting ENTIRE PIECES OF CONTENT from other sites without introducing them as such at the beginning of each post.  You’re not doing that to US anymore, thankfully, but you haven’t changed your business practices sufficiently to make this apology even remotely meaningful.

We wish The Chicks on the Right nothing but success for their team, and hope that they continue to spread the word of conservatism. We pray they will come to realize that as conservatives, we are all part of the same philosophical family.

Oh don’t worry – we’ll absolutely continue to spread the word of conservatism.  It’s what we’ve always done. Long before the “Blunt Force Truth” was doing it, in fact.  But it’s sites like “Blunt Force Truth” that make it that much harder. It sucks to have to compete against our OWN FREAKING CONTENT simply because they’d rather steal from others than do the work themselves.

This isn’t rocket science.  If you plan to repost entire articles, seek permission first.  Use proper attribution.  Credit the original content creators.  Or better yet, STOP COPYING AND PASTING ENTIRE ARTICLES, and write your own damn commentary.

We’re part of the “philosophical family” that believes in hard work and personal responsibility.  Those are fundamental tenets of conservatism.

But wait.  There’s more.

Mark’s post obviously brought out his most rabid followers, which obviously brought out my defensive side, and that brought Mark out to try to make us look like the bad guys again.  BEHOLD:

That’s a question Mark was keen on avoiding.

He was referring to a post that Daisy wrote in 2011 which included a link to an embedded clip from the old Love Connection show. He Actually Compared that to lifting entire posts.  Holy mother of clueless.

Yeah.  We read it.  So sorry that you had to waste all your time on someone you feel is so beneath you, Mark.  Maybe you should’ve thought twice before stealing content from losers like us.

The next morning, I woke up and saw this tweet from the Man Behind The Curtain Himself.

I was kinda stoked, because honestly as Daisy and I talked about this, we figured it was entirely possible that Chuck had no idea how his site was actually being run.  I mean, Mark CLEARLY has no idea what copyright infringement is, but we thought, “Maybe we oughta give Chuck the benefit of the doubt here, and talk this through with him, now that he’s given us that opportunity.”

So I responded.

It was around 5.30am that I sent that DM to him.  By 5.30PM, after a whole day of Chuck tweeting all kinds of stuff but not responding to that message, I sent a follow up message, and he finally responded several hours later.  And suffice it to say, he still doesn’t get it.

Neat how he cut off our ability to respond, isn’t it?

YOU GUYS – HE COMPARED HIS SITE TO DRUDGE.  Drudge doesn’t copy and paste ANYTHING.  He links to stories, so that those content creators get the credit (and traffic) they deserve.  It’s like literally the OPPOSITE of what Chuck and his friends do. It’s the photo negative of what they do.  Drudge HELPS fellow conservatives.  Chuck hurts them.  It’s not complicated.  And unfortunately, he’s not alone.  There are dozens, perhaps hundreds of other sites claiming to be run by conservatives who do exactly what Chuck and Mark are doing – they copy/paste the hard work of others as their own for their own financial gain.  We’ve watched it happen many times – we just never thought someone with as much name recognition as Chuck Woolery would need to stoop to that level.

So yeah.  We’ll obviously continue to use our energy to fight progressivemarxistdemocrats by doing the same thing we’ve done for the past 9 years – which is a hell of a lot longer than Chuck and friends have been doing it.  And we’ll do it without stealing the work of other conservatives.

Onward.