Wine content theft

[Roy Hersh]

I thought that Dr. Big Jay was in trouble a couple of years back; his ethical dilemma was caught betwixt and between, eventually took down his career as a wine journalist and badly tarnished the reputation of The Wine Advocate at the time. Now there is a campaign building to take down Natalie MacLean. I am not passing judgement here, just sharing the story. Note to self, "never cross the line."

http://palatepress.com/2012/12/wine/content-theft/

[Andy Velebil]

Can't say I've ever heard of her but that is plain wrong not to first get permission to post their work and fail give it proper credit as well.

[Tom D.]

The scary part of the internet and blogosphere is that people seem able to rise to levels of considerable visibility in a particular field, without any real achievements or body of work to back it up. That temptation to "cross the line," to compile content and attract attention in a lazy shortcut manner, must be very real to many. The mere fact that a person tastes a lot of wine and has a gift or mania for blathering about it, doesn't necessarily make that person worth paying any attention to.

Roy, you've certainly earned your reputation over many years and acquired your audience the right way. I've never met you but your body of work speaks for itself.

[Stewart T.]

Truth be told, I ghost wrote all of Roy's newsletters and tasting notes

Seriously, I have been amazed at Roy's palate and my wine knowledge has personally benefitted from his amazing dedication to Port, Madeira and Douro wines, as well as his willingness to share his knowledge with others.

I agree that he has earned his reputation the old school way - a lot of effort, a lot of drinking...um...tasting and an unwillingness his journalistic integrity. He said it from the first day we conceived the website "I do this For The Love of Port."

Well done, my friend.

[Andy Velebil]

Truth be told, I ghost wrote all of Roy's newsletters and tasting notes

You da man

Yes, nothing beats tasting and tasting some more.

[Eric C]

With the "net" and mass of information to get your hands on, it is sometimes difficult to know where it originated, although she may have known it

I´m starting a wine shop, with port wine , so I trying to give as much information as possible. Doing that, you automatically have assembled "content" / information / knowledge from all over the net.
That´s why I contacted some guys where you do find a mountain of knowledge about port wine and asked them if I could use somehow their "knowledge" and add a link to their website.
Till now, the ones I asked have answered positively Well, all except one, on "big" name hasn´t answered any of my emails, now figure out who

[Paul Fountain]

I've been following this story with interest. The comments from the palatepress article are particularly juicy, with some well known writers and bloggers having their say. Also enlightening were a couple of responses from Natalie McLean herself where she seems more interested in the legal technicalities rather than ethical behaviour. It also seems that there are other areas where her practices could be considered questionable as well.