There’s “fair-use” and then there’s stealing. And TotalDrama is asking Leo Laporte and all the hosts and contributors on the TWiT network to stop stealing other journalists’ hard work.
On every program that he appears on, Leo Laporte plops himself down in front of his laptop and just starts reading The Verge, Engadget, 9to5mac, MKBHD…it has to end.
Why do these news outlets, bloggers and hard-working tech journalists allow their work to be basically stolen from them? Leo then just puts a NatureBox ad on top of their stuff. It’s not right and goes way beyond the established “fair-use” rules for commentary or parody. Leo is doing nothing to “advance the public discourse.” He’s merely robbing these sites of their content for his own personal monetary gain. And it must stop now!
We call upon Leo and his entire crew to stop this theft immediately.
I remember for weeks Leo would sit down at 3pm on a Sunday and when it came to an opinion he would pluck the comment made on a CNET piece by the public and read it out verbatim and claim it to be his opinion. He couldn’t even use his own words.
I had just read the same comment on the CNET article and the comment had been made hours or even days earlier yet he was too lazy to even phrase the opinion in his own words.
When it comes to Elgan’s “Yellow Journalism” Mike Elgan and Leo Laporte are the kings of it. The vermin of the Tech World are those that steal other people’s work and imply it is their own even if it turns out to be just a comment made to a piece they read it is still stealing.
Righty» Quote comment
I am personally appalled at the amount of verbatim reading that goes on during these broadcasts. As a self proclaimed ‘off-site ‘ reporter for the ‘Dramatic Lady’ I am insulted at these illegal practices. Is Leo repurposing others hard work for his own monetization? If so, doesn’t credit and monetization belong to the original journalist since they did all the research to create the article?
Fair use only covers excerpts when reporting On the article itself, not the topic of the article. Laporte is usually covering the topic of the article when he reads these articles on air, not the article itself.
For example, If he is creating a story about or commenting on the article itself, that is fair use. However, if the article is about topic a, and TWiT is using the article content to report on topic a, that is copyright infringement.
I call on TWiT to please respect other peoples content and hard work. I also call on TWiT to do original reporting on these stories. Don’t they want to be the CNN of tech? How would Leo feel if he turned on CNN and saw Wolf Blitzer sitting there reading the New York Times on Air? How would he feel if every once in a while Wolf did an ad for Harry’s or Nature Box. I’ll tell you how he’d feel. He’d feel like the TWiT audience, that’s how he’d feel.
Leo, Stop this practice!
DZNuts» Quote comment
Seeing Wolf Blitzer reading ads for nature ox and Harry’s! He would throw a hissy fit and rant for 45 minutes on a Saturday Thhhhhheeeee Tech Guy as a monologue about Blitzer stealing TWiTs business model!
Righty» Quote comment
Nature box not ox.
Righty» Quote comment
No, you were right the first time.
J29Sailor» Quote comment
feh. twit does what other media outlets do.
buzzfeed is the worst.
Mr. Dunst» Quote comment
GumBag is the worst untalented boring old man Leo could hire.
I have more distain for GumBag than Hans Gruber lying on the cement after I chucked his ass out of the 40th floor window of Nakitomi towers!
GumBag is asking his fans to do his job.
This guy is raping Leo, losing viewers daily, and his BS is more boring than an Alex Jones hour rant!
Personally he is a shit talker and so lost at what TNT should be he has NO Clue! I can back up the NO research as well. He ran a story about a family member of mine and never researched it all. Front page of Google GumBag would have seen the real deal, but instead he just as usual rehashed someone else’s story. Poor Leo I think has NO clue of how bad and unwatchable that old tard is!
YKYMF!
McCLaNe» Quote comment
This is a good point, if you think about, they never have their own thoughts to discuss. Never. It’s always someone else’s thoughts.
The best part is Leo never discusses Mike’s idiot articles.
Human Dignity» Quote comment
HelloWorld: I’ll stop watching if you do.
If you keep watching, I’ll keep watching.
Jason Cortez» Quote comment
HelloWorld: This is strange coming from a stalker who lives his entire life through Leo and TWiT.
What you’re obviously too stupid to understand is that most TWiT shows are conversation shows. They’re talking about current events, and Leo is starting conversations about those events.
Should Leo ignore the press, blogs, websites and other sources of content, or should he go door-to-door to ask people what the current events are.
You’re stupid, clueless and creepy.
Jason Cortez» Quote comment
Jason Cortez, stop trolling and stalking us! We forum members are more intelligent than you.
So how about you get your dick out of Leo’s ass and realize he NEVER gives credit when he reads quotes from others’s blogs. He gives the appearance they are his own quotes. Obviously, you’re too stupid to ascertain that nuance (look it up.)
Fuck off, douchebag.
Holden» Quote comment
Leo is not STARTING anything. Present day Leo is at best a mindless repeater of a twerpy twit who has learned to become very good at his trade; that trade being spewing bullshit in front of a microphone over the radio and through the internet.
manimal» Quote comment
How do you suppose The Verge, Engadget, 9to5mac, MKBHD get their stories? They don’t rip them off from other websites.
Somehow Leo has forgotten what news gathering is. TWiT has a “News Department”. So you’re saying it’s their job to just read other news sites to gather news?
Most TWiT shows are conversation shows? What does that even mean? I’ve never seen or heard any other tech podcast sit there and read articles off the web unless they are reporting on or talking about the article it self.
Leo doesn’t even seem to know what the show will cover that week. He just reads off from a spreadsheet of links to articles that Jason gathered. Jason even steals the curation of these articles from sites like Techmeme. In other words, not only is TWiT too lazy to gather original angles on these stories, they are too lazy to actually narrow down the group of breaking stories for the week.
If you assign an employee to just gather up some stories, they are not going to put much care in to it. They just want to get the task done. So NOBODY is at the wheel at TWiT. Leo just shows up, un-prepared, and wings it. Usually by reading these stories on the fly, and then he just asks dumb questions to the other host to get them to talk.
He’s winging it, to get to the next commercial. All Leo sees is how much money he is going to make per episode.
Traditional news organizations keep a wall between the sales department and the editorial department. Leo is all about the ads.
Leo claims to be a journalist, and he invites journalist on the show, what about this makes it just a conversation? The fact that he is too cheap and lazy to put the resources in to gathering original reporting?
It’s shoddy material, and it shows that no effort is being put in to the content. It’s really sad actually that Leo doesn’t even see the poor quality of content he is delivering.
Compare it to anything else, and you will see.
HelloWorld best friend» Quote comment
Well said!
I would like to know why Elgum even bothers getting up in the middle of the night to prepare for TNT. Surely that time could better be spend learning to speak coherently or learning about being a real Journalist instead of a sad pathetic hack who spends his time trawling the internet looking for stories and then contacting the authors of the work asking them to read us all their story.
While DTNS is very similar at least they don’t expect the writer of the story to be there reading it and it really is a discussion of the article and the implications.
I’ll never forget the Elgan opinion that really had no opinion of its own or those guest hosts that vanished after their jibes about the news and Elgan’s opinion cut a little too deep.
Leo likes Elgum because they are like long lost brothers. They really are the Leaders in the Yellow Journalism field! Happy to take someone elses work and words and rehash it to make it their own or sometimes just take the other person’s words and repeat them and still call it their own!
Righty» Quote comment
And let’s be honest. Leo doesn’t put much effort in to the content, because he knows very well that as long as they are selling ads he’s going to make his money. So he knows he can get away with being lazy.
Maybe this is why a site like this exists, because we were excited about the potential of TWiT, but now feel disappointed that he doesn’t even care.
He’s drunk on success, and drowning in more money then he ever imagined. And this fact has brought out the worse in Leo in many ways.
What ever happened to being passionate about the quality of your product?
HelloWorld best friend» Quote comment
Jason,
Real Estate biz slow today. Get lost
Mark» Quote comment
McCLaNe: Agism is just prejudice against our own future self.
I’m curious: If you don’t like Gum’s show, why do you watch it?
Jonathan Blackwell» Quote comment
Human Dignity: Actually I’ve heard Leo talk about Gum’s articles dozens of times on TWiT, TWiG and MacBreak Weekly.
Jonathan Blackwell» Quote comment
HelloWorld best friend: Actually, you’re wrong about that. The Verge, Engadget, 9to5mac and all the major publications get many of their stories from other websites.
It’s called a “pick-up,” and 95 percent of the content on these sites are pickups. For example, if you look at the bottom of Verge articles, they link to the site they got the information from.
When The Verge writes an original-reporting piece or opinion piece, they don’t have such a link at the bottom.
Information is not copyrightable, only the expression of that information.
Jonathan Blackwell» Quote comment
Jonathan: You’re correct. But again on the air Leo does not do that. He does not credit the source, thereby implying the thoughts he expresses are his own. That’s my beef with him.
Holden» Quote comment
Interesting, I just looked at 10 random stories on The Verge, and none of them are “Pick-ups”, and don’t have links at the bottom saying they got the article from somewhere else.
Nobody said information was copyrightable, but articles written by these tech sites is copyrighted material. Reading copyrighted content off a website on air, and playing videos created by these sights on air for your own reporting is copyright infringement.
Also for a few podcasts that come to mind that don’t read articles on the air, but do cover tech news:
Gillmor Gang
Accidental Tech Podcast
iMore Show
Vergecast
The Maccast
The Talk show
So I suppose TotalDrama can create a podcast of them playing TWiT podcasts, and commenting on it, and sell ads to monetize it?
HelloWorld best friend» Quote comment
The Verge: All are pickups – it’s called the VIA link at the bottom of EVERY SINGLE ARTICLE.
The Verge is all about PICKUP.
OMFG» Quote comment
Righty: Gum has journalists on because they know the stories better than anyone else. It’s one of the reasons TNT is by far the best technology news podcast there is.
It’s obviously targeted at intelligent people, so idiots won’t get it.
Jonathan Blackwell» Quote comment
lmao
I couldn’t make it through your comment without laughing out loud. You’re a master of deadpan if you actually typed all of that without losing it at least once.
Kudos. I’ll be buying your next comedy album, Jonathan.
JAS» Quote comment
If we boycott, then we will never know when the bad stuff stops.
OMFG» Quote comment