HuffPost Accused of Content Theft

(MoneyWatch)  Whet Moser at the Chicago Reader has done a nice bit of investigative work on the Huffington Post's current strategy for aggregating cultural coverage, in this case concert previews. He has documented that the HuffPost is lifting entire pieces from the Reader, Time Out Chicago, Centerstage, and the Onion's Decider.

Moser details that in case after case, the HuffPost is publishing the entire entry from these publications as its own content.

Note to Arianna: This is not kosher! Of coure, it's doubtful that Huffington herself is even aware of this practice, but somebody in her organization knows what they are doing. This would appear to be an attempt to bolster the amount of content, which on the web correlates directly with increased traffic, and boosting SEO, which yields highly-valued organic (free) search engine traffic.

Obviously, linking to each others' work is what the Web is all about. We all do it every day. But best practices involve reprinting a snippet of another's post, crediting them, and linking to them. That's what I'll do here with this report. The details are quite yummy, (and damning) but in order to read them, you must follow this link to Moser's excellent work!
(Note: The Huffington Post has not yet responded to these charges.)

Thank you to my colleague Erik Sherman for alerting me to this controversy; and please check out his post on this topic.