That's the one.
I'm not going to spend much time on this, as there are better things to turn my attention to, but I will say this. Contrary to the perceptions of some, we 'steal' nothing. Bucknuts alone has had some entirely valid concerns in the past with how we linked to, summarized or referenced information from them. What few people know, is that I personally spoke with and worked with Lee/Mr.B over there to find ways we could better respect BN's wants and needs related to their content, not just the letter and spirit of the related intellectual property laws as we already were.
So yes, in the past, even as we had 'drama' with Bnuts (and as grad as rightly pointed out, that's not just the past, it's the distant past), we were still communicating with them in a good-faith effort to be good neighbors.
I have dozens of emails stored away from people who have come to me with concerns about picture leeching, improper content posting, property concerns and so on within user posts within this site. Dozens is not bad over as many years as we've been online. Without exception, we have given every single one of these emails proper consideration, and
without exception every single complaining party has come away pleased and appreciative with the actions taken.
Our goal at BP is for
OSU fans to inform
OSU fans. To do so as a collective/community effort. Our secondary goal is to
supplement the active and respectable community -- BN, BSB, OZ, and the 'official' sites. We want to take nothing away from any of them. Likewise, we have no interest or intent to 'steal' from anyone.
In this case, Alan needs to learn that just because he's heard something, it doesn't mean that no one else has. I know how desperate (I should just leave it there) he is to have SOMETHING to offer, but the cheap eyeballs he'll get from this sort of stunt aren't going to translate to $49.95 (
usually $77!) subscriptions. I'm sure he feels that drawing attention to himself on the 'majors' (BN and BP, in this case) might mean more exposure, and some last minute Christmas subscriptions to SGN/BII -- but he's as mistaken there as he was when he directed LloydSev to clone BP.
I know we're being pretty well beaten up at BN
(edit: upon further review, not as much as I thought, and the one instigating reads a lot like Alan himself does, hmm), and that's cool, but everyone here would do best to just shrug that off. Some folks over there are still operating on perspectives they developed 2 or 3 years ago. If they haven't bothered to reconsider those perspectives that were unfair back then, and are tragically flawed now, then they're not going to in the heat of the moment in some thread here, there, or anywhere else.
To bother to address the specifics of this situation, I will say as a plain and simple absolute that 'we' had this information
before it was posted anywhere on SGN. If anyone who knows me thinks I'd make that type of declarative statement as a casual or baseless point of defense, well, then they just don't know me. I always want to ask what people believe BP has to gain by 'stealing' information. We don't charge any money. We've spent far more than we've brought in via contributions over the years. Increased traffic doesn't help us. In fact, with it comes more headaches for the mods, more expenses and backend work for me, less of the 'family' atmosphere many of us value so much around here. We're driven by being "by and for Buckeyes", and not by the money (even if it's less than normally charged!) that we might be able to make whoring information. One truth about fan sites these days is that nearly everybody visits them. On BP, we have players, prospects, recruits, former recruits, certainly immediate family of all of the above, HS-level coaches, college-level assistant coaches, pro players, pro scouts, casual fans, non-casual fans ('nuts', I say almost entirely warmly), friends of all of the above, etc. I mean, 'collectively' we (like the other 'big' sites) have almost
too much access. If anyone thinks that information about what we all pay so much attention to only gets to them and no one else, then they're deluded.
So to echo grad's points -- no need for drama here
