Vulgar Opinions: Paul Hamilton Rips Off Thomas Vanek, Delicious Red, Ecowin Publishing

The most irritating part of this story is it could have been avoided with the bare minimum of effort from Paul Hamilton, or really from anyone approving content over at WGR.  Today Hamilton posted an article titled “Sabres Vanek Blogs About Grigorenko and Hodgson” that is basically a copy-paste of an article from Vanek’s blog.  Moving past the obvious humor that Paul Hamilton still managed to continue his penchant for grammatical errors in the title, the big beef I have is that Hamilton couldn’t be bothered to link back to Vanek’s site.  Oh look, I did it.  That was hard…

Hamilton says that Vanek has given him permission to do this, and that he has done it before.  I believe him on both counts, but Hamilton should still be linking to Vanek’s site.  That Hamilton didn’t means he is still stealing, but instead of content, he’s stealing traffic from Vanek’s website.  By keeping traffic from Vanek’s site, Hamilton is denying publicity to and potentially keeping money from:

• Vanek himself
• Vanek’s publisher (he links to his book’s Amazon page)
• Delicious Red, a band that composed a Thomas Vanek song (seriously) and advertises on his site

It’s not a great stretch to assume that a significant portion of Vanek’s fanbase would visit his site through WGR and either buy his book (not likely as it’s in German), or (much more likely) check out Delicious Red.  As an independent author and a small business owner who does business mainly through the internet, you can imagine the personal issues I have with Hamilton ripping off others like myself.