I wish I hadn’t read Scoops response on Deadspin, it just makes matters worse. Fight the good fight friend, we have your back.

WWESPND? They’d lawyer up in a heartbeat.

That’s grounds for expulsion from any many journalism school. He’s pulling in a hefty salary from ESPN.com to deliver original content, and he blatantly plagiarized. If you do that on a term paper, you get a 0. Why do we lower the standards when he’s getting paid so much more? Scoop or the editor or whoever should resign immediately. There is no real debate on this.

The problem is that ESPN thinks it’s doing yaysports a favor by using it’s material, like you should be flattered instead of piss’d off.

Beyond the moral side is the legal one – “Orange Roundie” is mine. I own it, and have (had?) future commericial interests in it.

Make the ball talk all you want, but you can’t call it the Orange Roundie. It’s a pretty black and white issue.

The links on ESPN with the tattoo question are completely different than this situation. When quoted on ESPN, each blogger was specifically attributed to with their name AND their site’s url. It could not have been more clear that the material of that section of the Daily Dime came straight from bloggers. This article had neither, and that’s stealing, a clear violation of both law and journalism ethics.

The snobbery argument bothers me incredibly. Let’s say that you had an invention and patented it. Wouldn’t you be angry if someone else took credit for your invention? Wouldn’t you want to tell everyone you could about the injustice you received? I severely doubt that you would just drop the issue. Not only that, but if you did drop the issue, what’s to stop this company from doing it again? How will things ever become right if the victim does nothing about it?

Quite simply, the sports blogosphere (and the blogosphere in general) should be standing in solidarity with Cavalier. If this was one of your friends, I’m sure you’d feel the need to lend him support. Like it or not, the sports blogosphere offers a community, and we stand up for each other. If that makes us snobby, so be it.

We’re not restricting anyone from this or even telling everyone what to believe. The very discussion that is occuring here is an example of the tolerance of this blog to differing points of view. So I don’t understand where the argument of snobbery holds water.

Like I said, if you believe that it is snobby of fellow blogs to support Cavalier and their own rights, then you don’t have any concept of how this injustice can be remedied. When there’s an injustice, we have a duty to do everything possible to prevent it from happening again. If this is snobbery, so be it.

Here’s the thing that nobody understands, and maybe it’s a quirk of mine I need to fix or something.

I feel so strongly about using other people’s ideas or even being influenced by others ideas, that I’ll probably never be able to allow myself to use Orange Roundie again.

If even one person thought I took the name and/or concept from Scoop or didn’t think of it myself, I’d be crushed.

That’s why when I see people take material from others it’s really a lot to handle. As a creative person, it’s a mindset I have.

You see it all the time in the industry out here, and each and every story I hear, I just can’t concieve of how someone could even consider considering something like that.

He took your idea and run with it, expanding it, give it some exposure so as next time when u use it a bigger audience knows exactly whats the deal. I think u got yourself a free promo, u can actually turn it into a positive.

Shout outs to Scoop.

On the other hand, I try to read yay once every 10 days or so. I like the writing style you guys here have.

But honestly, I think you could have taken the high road on this. I’ve been following the roundie idea and I like it. I agree Scoop’s column was a very dumb/weak imitation. You should’ve called him out for that with a short post and left it at that.

Going postal on him and repeatedly saying you don’t care for ESPN or their linking to you only makes the opposite seem true. Why do you feel belittled by Scoop’s gesture of ‘love’? If you’re bigger than he thinks you are, you should be able to laugh his supposed attempt off.

I agree with a previous commenter that the blogworld is getting pretty snobbish, especially when many of the same bloggers were pumping their fists when they got linked to ESPN in the preseason coverage (the tattoo question and all that).

Bottom line: you guys were doing a great job UNTIL this happened.