that is really sucks. I mean really sucks. I'll try to get the word out myself too.

If it's okay to steal music, what's wrong with stealling a story?

This isn't "using" a story without paying for it - this is taking someone else's work and calling it your own. I'd say it was quite diffeent from file sharing, if that is the implied reference.

this seems to be commonplace these days. Private Eye are good for pointing out such wilful acts of arseholeishness in our "Great" British press, and believe me even the more "reputable" broadsheets do not seem above this kind of thing. Unless you have the resources for a legal fight with the Star (please, oh PLEASE get them shut down! i think that could maybe actually make the other papers realise it's not on to do this) there isn't a whole lot you can do. Heh, take a load of their articles and publish them online as having come from some fictional British newspaper (i'm quite happy to help come up with realistic names =+) and then pimp those pages. Then again, if they weren't original work in the first place, that'd just confuse things even more.
I *am* surprised that other media sources took the Star's word for the source of the story though. It's not exactly a reputable paper to say the least.

Newspapers and even broadcast news outlets write stories all the time featuring someone else's work, using other stories as sources, but they do attribute the original source of the information somewhere in the article. Perhaps that's the difference between responsible journalism and tabloid trash, which is what The Daily Star does appear to be.

attribution is the key here - thanks for the help Madison!

This happens a lot with pictures, sound and images too on websites, though usually not in the news, but on blogs and personal websites. People seem to wrongly think that they can just "borrow" these things for their websites without permission.

It is one thing to take a screenshot and attribute it to a website, but to hotlink original content (stealing bandwith) or to use the "save picture as" to rip images and pictures to republish on their website shows some serious stones and is total thievery.

Google images has already been tested in the courts with their use of images and that's one of the biggest stretches a website can take using another website's images without permission.

Also a problem, but still different in that "using" the pic doesn't prevent anyone else from seeing it or using it - it's the infinite digital reporduction thing - but taking the original work or someone and calling it your own DOES rob them of something even more precious than payment: authorship.

Ah, so. Sometimes it seems as if reporters and writers are the only people in the blogosphere who care about, or even understand, attribution and copyright.

However, I am not clear on something: Did Berry prominently display a copyright notice on his article so there was no ambiguity?

He has a copyright notice at the bottom of every page including the worst sex scenes story, but what is confusing me is that the open letter I link to here is gone already. I wonder if there has been some kind of legal threat from The Daily Star or one of the syndicators. Are you out there Robert?

I don't believe they would have grounds to force him to remove a commentary they don't like, Eric. Maybe it is just a broken link.

Unsolicited legal advice: Add a permissions link to copyrighted material, so people have an avenue for getting the right to use the material. That enhances one's position if they still lift it.