TechCrunch Loses My Respect for Copyright Violation

As you know, Jason Calacanis, CEO of Mahalo, fired 10% of his staff and then wrote an emotional email to his private mailing list, stating specifically, “Please feel free to forward this to folks you think it would help, but please don’t republish this on the web.”. The copyrighted content was published in its entirety by Erick Schonfeld of TechCrunch. Jason was obviously not very pleased about this and throughout the day tried to get TechCrunch to remove the post without success. Some of his twitter messages on this context are illuminating:

JasonCalacanis: @MKFlynn please do NOT republish my email newsletter. it is not intended to be republished and it is copyrighted.

JasonCalacanis: @zemote Exactly! do i have to do a DMCA complain @erickschonfeld? who is going to subscribe to my newsletter if you republish it?!

JasonCalacanis: @erickschonfeld you’re interfering with my ability to do commerce with MY PUBLISHING business. What if i start republishing your newsletter?

Jason also commented on the post itself:

Jason - October 22nd, 2008 at 7:26 pm PDT

Erick,

As I mentioned in my email to you, I would appreciate it if guys would not republish my copyrighted material.

You don’t have the rights to my email newsletter and I’ve specifically asked to not have it online. Do I really have to send a DMCA letter to your ISP?!?!

come on.

best j

I don’t want my email newsletter republished. Please respect my wishes. If you want to quote 75-150 words or less fine.

You’re interfering with my ability to run my newsletter business if you republish against my wishes.

why would anyone subscribe if they can get it here? Come on… really.

Jason’s arguments are very reasonable. He has the right to ask that the post be taken down. Publishing a content that you don’t own (and without permission) in its entirety is copyright violation. Erick Schonfeld has blatantly violated Jason’s right’s and he is not ashamed of it. TechCrunch and specifically Mike Arrignton should have intervened and taken out the post, despite it being some sort of scoop. Unfortunately it seems TechCrunch doesn’t care about copyright (at the time of writing this post) as much as it about landing a scoop.

Erick Schonfeld’s response was particularly apalling. When Andrew Fielding asks - “Doesn’t it specifically say not to republish it on the web?”, Erik replies - “I don’t work for Jason Calacanis.”. He then tries a lame (IMHO) justification about his responsibility to TechCrunch readers. Does that matter more than ethics and most likely law?

Jason also requested him to publish an excerpt, which he conveniently ignored.

One thing though, I actually subscribed to Jason’s newsletter after this email. In that way Jason is wrong. Yesterday, I saw several people asking Jason about his newsletter. Having said that, I think what TechCrunch did was in extremely poor taste and unethical if not illegal; if everything is as it looks. There is a third possibility though. Jason Calacanis, Mike Arrington & Erick Schonfeld are partners in TC50 and possibly other ventures. This could also be an innovative marketing ploy to bring Mahalo in the limelight and to popularize Jason Calacanis’ mailing lists. I am sure Jason has Erick’s number. I would think he can just call Erick and let his objections be known. Instead they decided to communicate over TechCrunch comments and Twitter! That doesn’t make any sense. If this is a PR ploy, which Jason is excellent at, then I would say it is in extremely poor taste. In any case the whole affair stinks.

Looks like TechCrunch decided to do a little kiss-and-make-up These A-listers know how to scratch each others back!