Oh man, the people at Digg are having a field day with this one. There is a submission titled “Engadget: Busted for Unethical Blogging” that currently has almost 700 Diggs and over 120 comments. As it turns out, Engadget posted a story crediting DAPreview, and using their watermarked picture. A short while later, the picture was cropped, removing DAPreview’s watermark - and the link was changed from DAPreview to an alternate source. They were called out on it on Digg, and after a bit, changed the article back to the way it should have been.

Very interesting - I had always heard there was a “blacklist” at Engadget, and figured Gear Live was on it when they stopped linking to us. Check this out:

http://www.engadget.com/2006/03/01/kill-tivos-big-announcement-kidzone-parental-controls/

That link was live after we broke the KidZone story, citing our internal source at TiVo. Now, you can’t find it at Engadget, unless you go straight to that URL. You will not find it by searching for it. You will NOT find it by browsing their Home Entertainment category. Go ahead - it isn’t there. It’s as if it doesn’t exist. Why, though?

Peter - care to comment? Maybe something is just broken on Engadget as it pertains to the database?

It looks like this is causing some commotion on Engadget’s Wikipedia entry as well. DesignTechnica and HardOCP have also picked up t he story.

From my end, I really, really hope this was an oversight - if not, it sucks.

UPDATE: A very interesting take on this over at OhGizmo

UPDATE 2: After observing how Peter and Ryan from Engadget have been responding to everything that has been thrown their way over the past few days, I am impressed. Let’s make one things clear - Engadget didn’t steal content. I would say that only those on the outside looking in would have that mindset. What impressed me most is how responsive Peter and Ryan have been. The issues that were pointed out here were addressed and fixed almost immediately. Anywhere on the Internet that this issue was addressed, they were there to offer their take.

They could have easily ignored it - but they didn’t. Kudos.