BlogBurst, Newspapers and Bloggers

Received in an email.

Medgadget.com (usually a quiet place to learn about the latest medical technologies) has been investigating a new service from Pluck, called BlogBurst. We have learned and revealed a number of questionable practices by the company - from republishing entire contents of bloggers on newspaper sites to deeplinking images from bloggers and innocent bystander websites. The most outrageous thing is that some of the nations' leading newspapers, including the San Francisco Chronicle, Houston Chronicle, San Antonio Express-News, and the Austin American-Statesman, are engaged in the deeplinking and republishing for profit.

Please spread the message! It is time for us, bloggers, to say that we value and respect our work.

Examples of main newspapers deep linking images off bloggers and third parties. All references can be found here.

Sincerely,
Doctors-Editors at Medgadget.com

Notably, authorization to re-publish a blogger's content doesn't come with permission to use a blogger's bandwidth. That's what is happening. The newspapers are hot linking into a blogger's server space without an okey-dokey.