Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Bloggers bite back

An email from Cactus Kate informs me that someone I have never heard of called Richard Henry has an online “men’s magazine” called Get Frank, which likewise I have never heard of. For two or three years now he has been using some NZ bloggers’ material, with their permission, on the understanding that when the site started making money from advertising he would split the income 50-50 with said bloggers on a page-view basis. Sadly, he was as trustworthy as a Nigerian widow who would like to give you $US5 million in exchange for your bank account details. He seems to have been stealing the bloggers’ work and then lying about the profitability, or lack of it, of his site. 

He has annoyed Cactus Kate, WhaleOil and David Farrar, which is really, really silly. Cactus has the clearest account here, WhaleOil the angriest – yes, really – and most detailed here.

1 comment:

Cactus Kate said...

Not just bloggers, he has many content providers (as we are called), who seem oblivious to his vast profits at their expense.

As he's admitted all his content is taken from elsewhere, that collective elsewhere is providing all the clicks and therefore revenue. That it is hard to divvy up is not the issue, it's that his attitude of fark you all isn't conducive in an inline environment to cordial relations with the "content providing industry.