I think many of the success stories of the last few years were built on the backs of plausibly deniable theft. YouTube was violating copyright left and right. Google was scraping everyone's data to use for their own analysis without asking etc.

The different here is that the editorial policy of this company is to steal. That's what they do. That's how they make their cash. That's a problem.

They are the Roland Piquepaille of... something.

I don't really see this as being a particularly big deal.

Editors overstepped the mark on very short single-paragraph articles by reproducing content in full rather than providing a short summary or blurb. The sites administration has now been made aware of it and have, rightfully, since fixed it. Their intentions seem honest as a link was provided to the original content. Hanlon's razor: never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

It's not "fair use" to reproduce someone else's copyrighted content in its entirety, link or no link. You also can't take an entire U2 album and post it, along with a link to the iTunes store.

If a "publication" that steals content needs $25 million in venture funding to expand, we're in for a wild ride.

VC source: http://is.gd/9I5M