While Andrew Orlowski and The Register is looking for Google to fix the "blog noise problem", it would appear that competitor, CNET, is relying on bloggers as "borrowed" resources.

Yesterday, Laurence Simon wrote this:

Senator Orrin Hatch's website uses a very impressive set of Javascript code for its menus, developed by Milonic Software. A professional developer's license is $34.99, and a corporate side-wide license goes for $899.00. [...]

So, does Orrin Hatch and his web support staff have a license number, or is he guilty of using unlicensed software himself? There's a "* i am the license for the menu (duh) *" comment in the View - Source, but no license ID number.

Laurence contacted the Senator's office, and received the ubiquitous auto-response. To date, he has not received any reply from Senator Hatch.

Later, a CNET staff writer wrote this:

On Wednesday, Hatch came under attack for allegedly being a copyright pirate himself. His hatch.senate.gov Web site's menus use JavaScript code created by the U.K. company Milonic Solutions. Milonic Solutions charges between $35 and $900 for the right to obtain a license number for its JavaScript menu, but Hatch's site does not include a license number. Instead, this comment appears in the site's HTML code: "i am the license for the menu (duh)."

A Hatch representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Currently, CNET has yet to credit Laurence Simon for his work. I sent an email to Declan McCullagh, the staff writer who apparently "borrowed" Laurence's work, but have not yet received any comment.