My day Wednesday started with a terse reprimand from Mike Gomez at Voice123. In fact, the subject of the e-mail was "PLAGIARISM CASE".
Yeah. As a journalist, I gotta admit, that caught my eye.
The e-mail stated: "Please receive a kind greeting from the Voice123 Team, the following
text originally published on our site has been found published on yours
here https://courvo.com/yada…yada…yada
currently matching 1116 words of our original content: (and here, they inserted the offending paragraphs totalling 1116 words). This HAD to be automated.
The message went on to say: "The information published on our site is protected by copyright and
since you have not requested permission to use it, we want to kindly
ask you to remove it off your site, otherwise we would have to take
actions accordingly.
"
Ooooh….I LOVE according actions!! I kid…and I understand the whole copyright thing, but I smelled a corporate rat, here.
1)The blog quoted a wonderful "how-to" about e-mail etiquette posted by the Quality Assurance Manager Steve Lowell. I was actually giving them kudo's for something well done. When's the last time anyone said something GOOD about V123?!
2) The blog was posted in MAY of '08. So, why wait so long to ask me to rescind?
Here was my reply:
Since the word "kind" is mentioned twice in your
e-mail to me, I find it "kind" of interesting you guys waited almost 9
months to make this request…that Steve Lowell well knew I had quoted your
policy…and that it only helps your cause…but there you go… 'just
gives me another chance to blog about the general antagonism
V123 has for it's voice talent.
Now, here's the kicker:
A couple of hours later, I get a nice phone call from back East, and a production company that wants to use my voice as narrator for a half-hour kids PBS program. After talking details, I said, "Hey, by the way, can you tell me how you found me? It helps me with my marketing plans." She said, "Yeah, sure, we found you on Voice 123."
)(cringe)(
CourVO
