Banking Law

My most recent post last Thursday evening (no longer online) hyperlinked to, and quoted from, a story in National Mortgage News. The next day, while traveling without access to my e-mail, I received an e-mail from some jerk who claimed to be an editor at Source Media, the publisher of National Mortgage News, who complained that I did not give attribution to the story from which I quoted passages in my post. My correspondent, who will remain nameless (to protect the foolish), could have raised the issue in a thoughtful and polite manner, perhaps even suggesting that hyperlinking, which most bloggers believe (and have believed for years) is sufficient attribution to the source, is not acceptable to Source Media. Instead, here's how the e-mail opens:

Your "Bank Lawyer's Blog" reproduced big chunks, without attribution, of our May 18th story on nationalmortgagenews.com about the mortgage fraudster who got a 99 year sentence in Texas. You're a lawyer, you must have heard of the copyright law. Do the right thing.

I was using an in-law's Internet access to briefly check e-mail that evening, so I didn't have time for an extensive reply, but I did inform my accuser that I had linked directly to the article from which I had quoted, and that prior to accusing someone of violating a law, perhaps he should actually read it. I was steaming, and my wife asked me what had riled me. When I told her, she laughed with gusto.

"So, some pissant editor who doesn't understand what a link is, who works for some pissant paper nobody's heard of gets bent out of shape because some pissant blogger who writes some pissant blog nobody reads didn't do what he thought was a good enough job of giving a writer of an article in the pissant paper credit for writing an article that most people don't give a hoot about. Have I got that about right?"

She had nailed it. God bless Texas. She also reminded me that I had promised her that as I am going to turn 60 this year (even though, as everyone knows, 60 is the new 40), I was going to distance myself from people and things that anger me, like self-important editors who can't recognize or follow a hyperlink and the publications that employ them.

So, rather than get in a war of visual acuity with the Stevie Wonder of newspaper editors, I'm removing the specific sources of aggravation. I deleted the post that the pissant found objectionable, not because I think he had a valid point, but because (A) it links to a story in his publication, and publicizing that publication is something I've decided is not on my agenda, and (B) it wasn't that much of a blog post anyway. I was in a hurry to pack for a trip and threw out a drive-by piece of snarkiness (the kind my tens of readers have come to expect of the pissants who post here). The only person who thought it worthy of interest was the other pissant involved in this contretemps.

I don't subscribe to the print version of National Mortgage News (I get my mortgage news from more entertaining sources, like Housing Wire, but don't hold that against Housing Wire), so I can't cancel my subscription to that journal. However, tomorrow I'm canceling my subscription to The American Banker, another Source Media publication, to which I do subscribe (but as of tomorrow, no longer). I'll also delete any links on this blog to either publication or to any blogs they sponsor. I'll never attend another seminar they or any of their affiliates sponsor and I will not pass up the opportunity to relate this incident to anyone at any appropriate (or even inappropriate) time. I'm merely a dust speck in the blogosphere, so my feeble efforts will have no real impact on Source Media, but I'll have one less source of aggravation in my life.

As Fredo Corleone was to his brother Michael, Source Media is now and forever "dead to me."