A lot of crying in this article. All that work just to try and discredit a small town free paper with 5 articles in it. I hate writers sometime.

Yeah, I'm sure this is exactly how you would feel were it someone encroaching on YOUR bread & butter.

This is a violation of intellectual property and copyright infringement. It doesn't matter whether one or 1 million people are reading it for free or paying $.10. It is plagiarism. Try doing the same with a college level paper and at best, you will fail the class, if not get thrown out for good.

Let's not even mention how THAT would look on your academic record.

Yeah, because the author's job and income was at serious risk from this. All he's done is put a couple of rednecks out of a job. I could care less if a million people stole my work, as long as I have my job, I could care less. There's people getting free rides everywhere. Chances are the guy sitting next to you is getting one right now.

I think you are both right. She has a point, and the article is a mildly interesting adventure into that kind of publishing ... but it does sound whiny at times, and a little bit more self irony would have helped.

Naswipp: Are you even registered to vote? You seem like the type to say "eh . . . does it really matter?" And certainly, you should work hard in life for the work that you enjoy so that someone can do absolutely nothing and take your credit.

Traugott: I agree on the self-irony issue. It seems this writer's indignant outcry is fueled mostly by her ego. I did love this line, though:

"It was then that I realized, with a pang of regret, that Mark Williams is not my biggest fan—a reader so enraptured by Rosen's prose stylings that he was driven to steal them."

Yeah, this is the biggest tragedy of the year. Get over it.

Those rednecks deserve to be out of a job if they can't come up with their own ideas. As someone else posted, writing does not always come easy to everyone, even professionals.

I am not a professional writer but this article boils my blood. Why? Because I know how downright frustrating is it to have a severe case of writers block (or no interest in a particular topic) and have a deadline looming over my head. If after toiling away for 20+ hours, writing and researching my paper, I find someone else has passed my work of has their own...I'm taking them down.

I'm not sure why anyone could feel justified in telling the author to "get over it" when something has been stolen from her. Is it because this is a piece of intellectual property instead of a material good? Is it because the thief is a pathetic publication struggling to fill its pages? Is it because you don't like the author's indignation at the thief's naked plagiarism and the refusal of his boss to do the right thing?

All of these things ought to bother you. We all expect our work and our property to be protected and permitting a small or insignificant theft opens the door to greater crimes. The media has enough problems without people making excuses for this kind of lazy journalism.

Yes, I am registered to vote. Voting actually has something to do with me, so of course I take an interest in politics.

My whole point is that this small town paper which is FREE and probably makes just enough in advertising dollars to pay a few people's salaries was the target of a search and destroy mission by the author just because of a raging ego. Why? That paper had absolutely zero impact on the author's life. None. Does having a one sentence siting at the bottom of the article mean that much? So much, that hours and hours must be spent just to destroy them for leaving it out?

It's like the miserable guy in your office who complains about how employee A shows up 5 minutes late and Employee B makes $10,000 more a year. If it has no impact on your life outside of annoying you, it isn't worth the headache of thinking about it. Focus on what you enjoy because it makes you happy. You only live once and life is way too short to be wasting time trying to knock someone else down a peg.

Sevumar, please tell me that you don't really believe that a small town magazine stealing a few words is going to open the door to the widespread theft of military technologies and other ideas that could have a serious impact on society. They are just words, who cares?

We're not talking about "stealing a few words" here and there. Whole paragraphs and the greater parts of articles were stolen here, and from an array of high-profile publications. I never said anything about military technology or anything else. What I did say was that if we brush of the plagiarism of some small town hack, it's easier for the next guy who wants to do it to point at Williams and say, "Well, he got away with it and I'm not much different, what's the big deal?"

The big deal is that no one deserves to be stolen from and what we have on Williams' part is a disturbing pattern of behavior indicating a lack of ethics and a desire to profit from the work of others. That is a big deal, no matter how small the impact of the infraction.

In terms of the big picture, it's all just a few words. I found the whole thing trivial and ego driven. I hope the author feels better knowing there's one less hack out there putting food on his table. Now he can get some rest. Knowing some dude 12 states away is no longer making $35,000 a year profiting off of his genius concert write up should make for less sleepless nights.