Give Credit Where Credit is Due

A screen grab of Vin Scully during the 1956 World Series (Courtesy USA Today)

The internet can certainly be the Wild Wild West.

In the nearly 13 years that I've written this little slice of heaven, I've used countless photos and links that I hoped would enhance your reading and viewing experience. Many of photos have been taken by me.

In the case of other photos, I've always made the effort to give attribution. Many -- if not most -- of the links have also received a nod to who produced that work.

It's not a perfect system, but when you've been brought through the ranks to do things "the right way," you do "the right thing."

If I screwed up, it was an oversight and I've always been happy to correct it. In fact, a friend in the road world caught a time that I used his picture, not knowing it was his. Truth is, I googled it, and saw that picture. It had no attribution. The minute he told me (and he said, "All you had to do was ask"), I made sure to note that it was his work.

He was cool about it, and that was it.

So it was that in the past 24 hours, I've had two cases of this. The first was completely minor -- I saw a post of mine on social media was used in an "Instastory" and I wasn't mentioned at all.

In fact,  I laughed when I saw it. No big deal, and I truly believe it was an oversight.

The second one? No, but I'm not going to get crazy over it.

I have a collection of sounds on archive.org (which you probably know). You'll find many shows, game broadcasts, and other odds and sods.

Probably the most popular file is a collection of Vin Scully sounds that I created a bunch of years ago. It spans from his call of Jackie Robinson stealing home plate agains the Yankees in 1955 (Yogi Berra said he was out; the umpire disagreed) to the final out of the 1996 World Series.

Never mind that Vinny worked for 20 more years, so I actually need to update it one day.

You can listen to (and even download) the file here. I encourage you to listen to some or all of it.


 I've seen that file embedded in other blogs and professional websites. While I'd love a mention ("posted by Vin Scully historian Rob Adams" will suffice, though that's actually a bit much), my thinking has always been that there are copyright issues and such, so I don't pretend to "own" the works. I just edited them for individual enjoyment.

However...

Now follow this link to The Sounds of Baseball. Give a listen to "Vin Scully – Some Highlights." Sounds familiar, right?

Again, no mention of me. OK, so be it.

But...look below the play button. There's a price -- $0.65 -- to BUY THE FILE TO DOWNLOAD IT!

Dude is trying to monetize this. Which just seems wrong in myriad ways.

Again, it is what it is. He's not going to get rich, and I'm not going to lose sleep over that money.

But isn't this, you know, just a bit...er...unethical?

The page has a large group of different sound files that he has cultivated from a variety of sources and sites. Still, to try to get people to pay -- even for just sixty-five cents-- just seems wrong.

It all means nothing, and makes for a blog post.

And so I wanted to tell you.