They got permission, right?

Someone emails to ask if it's a little ironic or something that the Writers Guild of America, West negotiations website has posted the full text of stories from Variety, the Hollywood Reporter, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Business Journal, TV Week and the Wall Street Journal. Not excerpts and links, the way blogs do, but the full text of stories with not even a link back to the original.

The email correspondent writes:

The WGA, which is always screaming about writers' rights, just lifted the intellectual property of a number of publications and parked it on its web site without any copyright bug, or 'reproduced by permission' notice. And this is the group that wants to go out on strike because studios don't respect its writer members enough?

I'm sure they asked permission...didn't they?