Giving credit to the first source.
A couple of years ago I was reading up on some current events on either the CNN or the ABC News web site. As is their custom, these sites not only offered me the news, but also a good deal of background information, including some basic facts and maps on the countries being discussed. The site acknowledged that the information was provided by a web site I wasn't familiar with and offered a link to that site. I clicked over to take a look, and the information provided there definitely rang a bell. A rather quick review of that information showed that this (previously unknown to me) content provider had cribbed its information word for word from the CIA World Factbook, a source I was familiar with since I'd referred to it often. I wrote a letter to either CNN or ABC News expressing my feeling that it was very distateful for a respectable news agency to give free advertising in such a way to a site that did nothing more than elegantly steal information that was freely available elsewhere, posting it on its site in the hope of increasing revenues through advertising. Though I very rarely find myself in agreement with the CIA it still seemed much more logical and correct to link to a site that distributed information for information's sake rather than to a site that tried to build a business model from that same information.
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