Who's lying about the Ulitzer Cloud Security Journal?

I've spent the last week jetting about for meetings and CloudCamps but now I'm trawling through the week's news and email it seems I'm not the only one who's been busy. On Wednesday SYS-CON announced the Cloud Security Journal on Reuven Cohen's behalf:

Reuven Cohen Launches Cloud Security Journal on Ulitzer

Providing Insight Into the Cloud Computing Security, Privacy and Related Threats

BY LIZ MCMILLAN

SEPTEMBER 23, 2009 10:45 PM EDT

Reuven Cohen launched today Cloud Security Journal on Ulitzer.

Cloud Security Journal offers dedicated coverage of cloud security & privacy news, practical insights and editorials that give readers a unique virtual perspective of the rapidly evolving area of cloud security, threats and privacy.

Reuven Cohen is Founder & Chief Technologist for Toronto based Enomaly Inc. - leading developer of Cloud Computing products and solutions focused on enterprise businesses.

Enomaly's products include the Enomaly elastic computing platform, an open source cloud platform that enables a scalable enterprise IT and local cloud infrastructure platform. Cohen is a thought leader in the emerging cloud computing industry and maintains a blog at www.elasticvapor.com.

Reuven's notorious for poking a finger in every pie but this development is particularly controversial given the existence of the Cloud Security Alliance and his company, Enomaly's average security track record. He already ruffled feathers by "Introducing the CSA" back in March so it struck me as odd that he should have risked a similar backlash some months later.

Sure enough he vehemently denies any such involvement, adding that "Scraping my RSS I can tolerate, but writing fake PR releases is going to far. Not cool." Now SYS-CON (aka Ulitzer) are not the most reputable source (see Aral Balkan's "My Sys-Con Nightmare" post, among others) but to announce something like this without your victim having any knowledge whatsoever seems a stretch even for them. FWIW Reuven was certainly supportive of the now defunct "Cloud Interoperability Magazine" launch so to try it on again with security would not be unprecedented.

I don't know who's lying about this (clearly someone is) but had this have happened to me I would have immediately instructed them in writing to remove all of my content and references to my name or any of my companies (as I have just done now). If that didn't work a DMCA notice and/or C&D letter would promptly follow. Yet Reuven has not done so. Why? It seems that in return for turning a blind eye to such indiscretions Reuven's company Enomaly is rewarded with over 10,000 mentions on sys-con.com and ulitzer.com (which was recently removed from Google's index, apparently following complaints about spamming and using others' content without permission).

Good on them for finding a free (albeit dodgy) source of free advertising. However by selling out and being "supportive" of Sys-Con/Ulitzer - criticising them on Twitter to save face but otherwise tolerating their antics - Reuven and Enomaly are giving airtime and an unwarranted air of legitimacy to an otherwise untrustworthy organisation. Worse still, inaccurate content from unreliable sources is being actively promoted by way of syndication, press releases and SEO spamming which is damaging to the cloud computing community as a whole.

I therefore urge Reuven Cohen and anyone else who's "feeling a little used and abused" to follow my example an request removal from SYS-CON sites. If that doesn't work then don't hesitate to take further action in the form of DMCA notices and/or C&D letters.