Mass Pirating of NaturalNews Content Escalates into Threats of Violence - Article Removed

Wednesday, January 28, 2009 by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...) Tags: piracy, health news, Natural News

The original story posted here has been removed. It was a factual account of an author who was pirating NaturalNews content and calling it his own. The story was factual and accurate, and it expressed disbelief that someone would pirate NaturalNews articles and even my own bio, calling it his own and then placing ads that earn him revenue for the articles he blatantly stole from NaturalNews.

The reason we have taken this article down is a serious one: We received a post from a reader who shared our anger about the piracy, but took it way too far and told us that he envisioned visiting the home of the person who pirated our content and strangling them (along with committing other violent acts).

That response is entirely inappropriate and completely out of control. In no way did I or NaturalNews intend to provoke or encourage such an emotional response to this issue. And now that this potential for violence has been raised, I have immediately taken down the original story and will not be re-posting it.

While I greatly appreciate the support from those who joined me in recognizing the blatant theft of NaturalNews content, and who condemned the pirate for stealing such content and taking credit for it under his own name, in no way did I envision that going public with this story could have even remotely resulted in someone concluding that violence was the answer to resolving these differences. The person in question stole NaturalNews content, yes, but even then I had already informed him that I was willing to resolve the whole issue and just move on if he offered an apology.

Although I strongly disagree with the person who pirated NaturalNews content, in no way do I condone acts of violence against him or any other human being. I stand firmly against the use of violence to resolve problems, and removing this story at the first sign of potentially violent escalation is the RIGHT thing to do.

We will instead pursue our differences with the person in question through legal means.

Let me be very clear to NaturalNews readers and supporters: Violence is NOT an appropriate response to this issue. And for the person in question who stole NaturalNews content, I am right now personally sending out a positive prayer for his safety and comfort, and even wishing him well in the future. What he did was wrong, and he knows it, but all humans make mistakes, and it's more important to acknowledge them and move on than to dwell in them.

For my part, I openly admit there is no way I could have anticipated the highly emotional response from some individuals that has been generated on this issue, and had I known that would have been the result of going public with this, I would not have published the story at all.

I think a number of lessons have been learned here today: The pirate in question has learned it's probably best not to pirate NaturalNews content, and I've learned that my ability to anticipate the public's response on such stories is not as accurate as I had hoped. The internet can be a strange place, and sometimes things come out of it that just defy all reason. When the threat of violent acts emerges from a theft issue, it's time to stop the madness and just appeal to calm and reason.

Let this be the end of the emotional charge on this issue. We will deal with the pirate in court and leave it at that.

If he apologizes for stealing NaturalNews content, I'll just consider the whole thing resolved and we'll all move on.

Note: In order to de-escalate the threat level on this issue, we have disabled all comments for this story. I apologize if anyone feels censored because of this, and I really do personally appreciate all of you who posted comments in support of NaturalNews. So don't take this the wrong way, but in the interests of letting this issue cool down, and de-escalating the emotional charge on this, I'm making a conscious decision to simply disallow all comments on this story from this point forward. Thank you for your understanding, and I apologize to those individuals whose posts were deleted from here. That's not normally something I would do, but this is an extreme case that demands proactive action on my part to calm this thing.