aka.tv Ctrl+C / Ctrl+V
Adrian J Cotterill, Editor-in-Chief
Is there any hope for accurate industry reporting when the likes of aka.tv quite blatantly copy word for word the work of others (in this case a GLOBE NEWSWIRE story).
Check out the story ‘Wireless Ronin Reports 2008 Fourth Quarter and Full Year Results‘ on http://finance.yahoo.com/ and aka.tv’s same story, errrr especially cos’ IT IS THE EXACT SAME story!!!
Cross referencing, citation, acknowledgment of sources and of course giving credit are one thing (and we do our fair share of that) but simple copy and pasting is not on!!
February 18th, 2009 at 15:29 @686
Adrian –
Both stories are simply reprints of the text included in the company’s 8-K filing (http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1356093/000095013709001121/c49470exv99.htm). News sites do this all the time.
February 18th, 2009 at 15:41 @695
John, with at least two exceptions…
1. Yahoo correctly attribute theirs to GlobeNewswire
2. Yahoo probably have a licence to reprint. Note the “Copyright © 2008 GlobeNewswire. All rights reserved. Redistribution of this content is expressly prohibited without prior written consent. GlobeNewswire makes no claims concerning the accuracy or validity of the information, and shall not be held liable for any errors, delays, omissions or use thereof.” at the end of the Yahoo article !!!
Either way it’s lazy and as a few folks have pointed out on Twitter – “that’s a new low in industry blogging”
February 18th, 2009 at 19:00 @833
I’ve seen aka.tv as ‘aggregators without attribution’ for a long time, they are useful if I miss something but most of the time it is word-for-word what I read somewhere else.
I also don’t like that their rss feed only teases the article on the website – you still have to click through to read the thing.
February 23rd, 2009 at 11:02 @501
This is the company’s own presentation of their results taken from their website.
We don’t often re-print press releases verbatim, but with the financial results of listed companies seeing HOW they are presented is often ‘the real story’.
For this posting the point being made seems to be about the range of information available from different companies in this market. Being listed, Ronin is one of the few that really has to ‘bare all’. Wouldn’t it be fascinating to see a few others having to open their books in this way…
We’ll look into ways to improve the RSS mechanism.
Thanks,
Richard