WORLD WIDE WEB – When giving the proper credit to AdultFYI.com, I usually don’t mind if someone yanks one of our original stories and posts them on their site. So long as people were informed of the source and there is a working link. In fact, when I think a story is hot enough, sometimes I’ll invite someone to take it for their site, again, so long as their readers know it came from us.

But what about the stories people cut and paste from our site that we didn’t authorize or get the credit for? Not original stories, but stories we ourselves lifted from someone else.

Stay with me now, this might get complicated.

While AdultFYI prides itself on many daily original stories, we also like to post mainstream stories that you won’t normally find while surfing adult news sites. We feel that it’s better for us to gather stories from dozens of sites [giving them the proper credit] instead of making our readers click around all day to find a good variety of news. Most publishing and information companies don’t mind if we post an occasional story from their source, so long as there are links and such, which we happily oblige.

Unfortunately, after doing a lot of footwork to add to the variety of news you can find on AdultFYI.com, some people like to even take these stories–without credit, as to where they first heard about it. I mean, technically it’s fair play when the Associated Press writes a story, they see it on our site, then post it for theirs, giving credit to AP. In my opinion, that’s kind of cheesy and spits on the research we have done, but since it’s not our story they have fair rights to it.

Also, keeping in mind the goal in news is to have a story first, why a service would want the same story that we had up already, presented with the same facts, is beyond my comprehension.

The problem I DO have with sites stealing our researched stories is when they lift it directly from our site and then credit someone else, thinking we won’t notice.

Case and point on AdultBeat.com yesterday. Luke AKA Duke AKA DUC, took a story from AdultFYI.com called “Smile…You’re on Candid CamPhone,” originally from the Associated Press. Ah…hah….but was it from AP??? I think not. The story was actually written by Larry Muhammad of the Courier Journal.

In an attempt to catch someone with their hands in the cookie jar, I credited AP, even though it wasn’t their story. Luke took the bait and posted it on his site, quoting AP as the original source.

He’s well known for cut and paste jobs and quite honestly, I really don’t care but I thought you AdultFYI fans would appreciate someone caught in the act!

Hey Luke, stop stealing our stolen stories!