City Pages' Andy Mannix is perhaps the Twin Cities finest plagiarism correspondent. Maybe a better way to put it is, plagiarism tracker.

Last summer, Mannix produced a stemwinding chronicle of a term-paper entrepreneur, earning the reporter a retaliation web page from said plagiarizer. (No, I'm not going to link to it, but it shows the risks of the beat).

Now, Mannix has nailed the folks behind Local MugSHOTS, the newsprint equivalent of breath mints or snooze at convenience store check-out counters.

Writes Mannix, "The Florida-based publication is reprinting — in most cases word-for-word — articles from KARE-11, FOX9, The Des Moines Register, City Pages and more ..."

As should be obvious: verbatim, in its entirety, without attribution, is not "fair use," it's copyright infringement. Mannix's story is capped by the always-entertaining transcript of the rip-off artist hanging up on the reporter.

Yes, yes, there's a lot of "aggregation" going on in the media these days, and two years ago, City Pages was the target of complaints it borrowed too liberally from items it quoted. As my October 2008 post noted, "One can only imagine CP's outrage if someone reprinted 94 percent of their latest hot story, instead of an intriguing summary and link."

Things have improved dramatically at the alt-weekly since then. Short of taking nearly everything, the "how-much-can-you-excerpt" line is a squishy one, but unlike Local MugSHOTS, CP (and other aggregators in the genre, including MinnPost) add their own commentary and attribute the source.

Brazen pilferers may want to be a bit more careful, especially if they're thinking about ripping off the Pioneer Press. The PiPress's corporate parent, MediaNews Group, recently got in bed with Righthaven LLC, which has made a business of suing copyright infringers. Righthaven demands monetary damages and domain names; the venture's unwillingness to discriminate between sophisticated offenders and naïve ones has earned it much criticism.

In case you think these crime rags are no big deal, I remember stopping in my neighborhood convenience store this summer and asking the proprietor how many were selling. "More than the Star Tribune or Pioneer Press," he replied.

What's even more amazing, or dispiriting: at a buck a copy, Local MugSHOTS costs more than either daily on weekdays.