V123 Makes Renewal Decision Easy

One of my core beliefs is in the inherent goodness of people…and by extension: institutions, businesses, organizations, and groups.  I know it's a bit Pollyannish, but the reverse is just too depressing and mostly untrue.

So when Voice123, now, for the third time accuses me of plagiarism, I'm throwing in the towel.

You may remember in Feb of this year, I blogged about an auto-generated message they sent accusing me of plagiarism.  The original article in question applauded and quoted content written by Steve Lowell — back then, their Quality Assurance Manager — on proper e-mail etiquette…not even a core service of V123.

At the time, Mike Gomez of V123 wrote to say they would have to "act accordingly" if I didn't pull the plagiarized article. Silly me, I failed to do that.  I meant to…I thought I did.  Really.

In November of last year, they asked me to rescind or unpublish a blog that quoted verbatim from employee Steven Lowell's explanation to me of why each member is required to log-on to the service at least once every 30 days to keep their account active.

Never mind that his comments were attributed, promoted, and properly quoted.  In the opinion of single-minded V123, it was plagiarism.  Steven even responded to me, and I blogged about THAT.

Fine.  I unpublished that blog, and got universal support from blog readers and commenters in my disgust with V123's request and the company's policy in the first place.

Today, another e-mail notifying about the e-mail etiquette article that I forgot to delete.  But the notice didn't acknowledge the previous warning, or mention that I was a bad boy for ignoring them.  Nothing!  The e-mail was an exact, carbon-copy, software-driven notice devoid of humanism:

Hello Dave,

Please receive a kind greeting from the Voice123 Team, the following
text originally published on our site has been found published on yours
here http://www.courvo.biz/2008/05/
equivocating-e.html?asset_id=6a00e5500697a3883400e55233c9a48834
currently matching 1116 words of our original content:

(then they reprint the entire quote)

The information published on our site is protected by copyright and
since you have not requested permission to use it, we want to kindly
ask you to remove it off your site, otherwise we would have to take
actions accordingly.

Kindly, 

Mike Gomez

The Voice123 Team

My response:

This is not plagiarism, it's a "quote".

Big difference. 
 

Just out of curiosity, what "according actions" would V123 take, Mike? 
 

Like everything else at V123, this is obviously an automated process
done by some sort of "bot", 'cause this has been published for quite
some time, and certainly if you really CARED, V123 would've requested a
removal LONG ago. (oops!)
 

My subscription for V123 is up in about 2-3 weeks. I've been waffling
about whether to re-up. 
 

Thanks for making my decision. 
 

Dave C

The notice smacks of everything wrong about V123.  I doubt a human was even involved in the generation of this missive.  The method belies the madness at V123.  Impersonal.  Money-grabbing. Beyond reach.  Formulaic.  Monolithic.  Unapproachable.  Unresponsive.  High-handed. Pedantic.

So, I'm done.  I've never gotten one workable lead from V123.  Never one job.  No longer worth the investment I rationalized as being a marketing tool.  I lament the time I've spent giving them the benefit of the doubt, developing my profile, and wasting space on this blog believing that underneath there was a human who cared. 

I could be over-reacting.  I've been known to do that from time-to-time.  'Not sure if I'll really delete the "plagiarized" article, now.

But V123 proves there is an exception to my own core beliefs.

CourVO