Argh. Being someone who wants to start a freelance (or otherwise) tech writing career, I can't imagine how much it must sting to have your work taken without credit and applied somewhere else-I mean, that's your livlihood there. I suppose there's no way for you to take action against the offending publication, is there?

Just curious. Are you sure ZD doesn't have a licensing arrangement with XINHUA online? Big shot publishing types (such as those at Ziff) tend to do that sort of thing, and they don't tell reporters, editors and columnists when they do. About eight years ago I was the editor of Windows Magazine and wrote the magazine's editorial. I was at Comdex when some girl from Argentina walked up to me and told me she resigned from a publishing organization that both licensed our magazine (for translation into Spanish) and did a TV show. Her resignation was the result of one of her superiors, who had an opinion segment on the TV show, and he basically read the Spanish translation of my editorial as his own opinion. Mike Elgan

phoenix - We have a lawyer who writes Lawyer Letters. I imagine the editors of Xinhua in Beijing would sort of laugh that one off. The Chinese really don't seem to care much about intellectual property, copyrights, that sort of thing. Mike - We actually have a lot of licensing agreements. Our stories appear on Yahoo! and ABCNews.com, and my reviews are licensed and translated into a bunch of languages. But they're always properly credited and bylined when it's a real licensee. The Xinhua thing is thievery, pure and simple.

This kind of thing really happens? That makes me mad. I remember once I had written this piece in college about Britney Spears: The Girl We Hate To Love...and many Brit Fan sites picked it up and posted the whole article (although that's illegal too). But, at least they gave me credit. Still, I don't like it when people steal your writing--it's just wrong. I'm glad that the U.S. takes it seriously.