Kotaku Steals Our Story, Refuses Credit
- Scribbled on November 29th, 2007 by Jonah Falcon
- Filed in Music/Rhythm, WTF
Kotaku does it again - blatantly stealing a story that GameStooge had posted three days prior and Dugg.
Good job, Kotaku. This isn’t the first time news submissions have been seemingly ignored then reposted as your own discovery - certain site owners can attest to that.
Site contributor Mitchell Dyer states:
It’s not the first time Kotaku has failed to credit a tip. As an editor of a smaller gaming site, I’ve had my tips go uncredited at Kotaku, where as Joystiq or X3F is always willing to give it where it’s due. I’ve tipped them about stories I’d created, been the source for, and they’d credit no one when they wrote it up.
Photographs I HAVE TAKEN WITH MY CAMERA have been used in their articles, no credit given.
Perhaps you felt that the original article getting only 4 diggs at the time was enough of a target to steal the story. Maybe you don’t understand this, but small sites like this need the site traffic. If you want to prove you came up with it by yourself, forward the “email tip” you claim to have gotten. Turnabout is fair play - maybe we’ll steal some of your news and not give credit where credit is due.
Site Editor in Chief Derrick Schommer states:
Kotaku has notified us of the write up, given us their original source, which was their own sister site gizmodo.com. We’ve all had times where information gets posted from anonymous readers who fail to quote original sources and when it comes to forums, it’s really write it as you find it. Kotaku is a bigger site and they don’t search the internet for stories before they post them so I can see how both stories can arise from the same original source.
They also stated, “The original story is posted on the official Rock Band forums. Which thousands of people visit every week. Including us.” It’s hard to argue that point since every news source is out to find all the good tidbits on the Net. We at GameStooge may have found it first, maybe not, I don’t know for sure. I do know, however, that many ’smaller sites’ find a lot of this odd information first and we don’t always get the credit for when its picked up on larger sites.
That’s one of the downfalls to being the smaller site
November 29th, 2007 at 4:33 pm
While I’m sure Kotaku has had their fair share of stories that they simply *couldn’t* find the credit for, when the information is readily available, find it. It’s investigative journalism. Hell, post your story, dig for info later - don’t deny it if it’s obviously there.
November 29th, 2007 at 4:50 pm
If they tried to Digg the file, they’d have seen the story on the Duplicate News warning at Digg. That’s why they didn’t try to Digg it.
November 29th, 2007 at 6:17 pm
In a word, bullshit.
November 30th, 2007 at 12:56 am
I am confused. The story they site happened befoe you wrote yours and for some reason, you think you deserve credit? Sites like our gets tons and tons of tips everyday. Hell, Dtoid even got the tip from the rock band forums. How in the world would anyone know that you posted the story also? Rather than drag people through the mud, and try to get a bogus story dugg for traffic, keep in mind that the Rock Band forums are a hell of a lot bigger than your site. (Thanks Nex for pointing this out) and the likelyhood of someone finding an article there is much greater in reality than it is here.
A simple rule, if its your original work, then you can claim it, but this wasn’t. You are claiming someone else’s work and taking credit on it. You wrote 2 sentences!