I believe you are confusing issues and trying to justify one misdeed through evidence of another possible misdeed. The two are twaned and cannot be reasonably used to negate the other.

1. He may or may not be legally obligated to give credit to the original creators. He certainly should, that I agree. But it has no bearance on the activities of Fuddruckers whatsoever; and if you believe it does then you are woefully obfuscating separate issues.
2. Fuddruckers technically linked; yes. But the manner in which they linked is termed hot-linking. They took his resources from him without asking. They framed his content and made it appear as if it was their own. It simply is, as a minimum, bad form.

Just because you technically can do it does not mean you should. That is to say yes, that is the way the WWW is technically constructed. It does not mean our society should be so ethically constructed. Thus peoples' rightful rancor with Fuddruckers.