I hate to take away attention from this Sunday's game, but I have to put a note out on a situation that recently came to our attention. Most of you probably are neither aware of nor care about this situation so please feel free to move on.
There was apparently a Facebook page that branded itself as Gang Green Nation. This page copied and pasted entire articles from Jets sites all across the internet. They did it to us. They did it to Turn on the Jets. They did it to The Jet Press. They did it to mainstream writers like Rich Cimini.
Anybody who writes knows that isn't a cool thing to do. The articles they posted didn't belong to them. The writers who worked hard on articles were not getting the credit they deserved.
Even though we had nothing to do with this and we ourselves were in fact ripped off by this site, people blamed us because the Facebook page was called "Gang Green Nation." This forced us to take necessary action, and as of yesterday the other GGN Facebook page is no more.
If you have had work lifted by that page and are upset about it, please read this and realize that your beef is not with us. This site had nothing to do with that page. This link takes you to our one and only Facebook page.
..................................................................................................................................
Now I probably shouldn't give this guy any oxygen, but the owner of the page that was taken down has not responded to this situation in a mature way. He has made all kinds of false accusations about our actions and our motives. It seems a few people are believing what he's saying so let me clear the air on a few things.
I attempted to solve this situation directly with him. I had two requests. First was that instead of copying and pasting entire articles, he simply provide links. That way Jets writers from across the web would get credit for their work. I'm sure all of the writers who had their work lifted by that page would have found that acceptable. It would have produced the exact same content for that Facebook page. It would have actually made his life easier. Instead of copying and pasting and flipping between pages, all he would have to do is click a button to share a link on every article he used to his Facebook page. Simple, right? Just link instead of copy and paste. For whatever reason, this drew a negative response.
I also requested he find a new name for his page since it wasn't fair that we were getting blamed for what he was doing. If he had just stopped copying and pasting articles that didn't belong to him and linked instead, we probably could have worked something out. Didn't happen. We didn't have much of a choice after that to stop this from happening but to go to Facebook.
Finally, this character is claiming big bad SB Nation is using its corporate influence to hurt "real fans." That's preposterous. Every single writer on this site is a huge Jets fan. Every single writer also does this as a hobby. We all either have school or real jobs. We balance what we do on this site against work and personal commitments. This is a hobby for everybody, one we do because we love the Jets. I've been living and dying with this team for 20 years. I remember Cary Blanchard missing three field goals in Buffalo in 1993, the fake spike game, and the one win in 1996 in Arizona. You might not think I'm insightful, but I will not allow anybody to question my fandom or that of anybody on this site. You know who else are real fans? The guys at Turn on the Jets, The Jet Press, and every other publication that Facebook page lifted content from without permission. That page constantly treated real Jets fans the wrong way. I guess the idea is preventing one person from taking content that does not belong to him from other Jets fans is attacking the real fans.
Again I apologize for this post, but it was unfortunately necessary due to the way some have acted.