A Recipe Gone Wrong

The bone of the contention is this. The written content of six
recipes were lifted from the blog of a Malayalee housewife Suryagayathri by
Webdunia, a content provider for various websites including Yahoo! and posted on
the newly launched Yahoo! Malayalam website, without her permission.

The new Yahoo! Malayalam site was created this February when
Yahoo! went desi-launching sites in seven Indian languages including Malayalam.
The company chose Webdunia as its content provider for all these sites.

The furor broke out by the middle of last month when a Webdunia
editor allegedly copied six recipes from Suryagayathri's Malayalam blog called
kariveppila (curry leaves) and pasted it under Yahoo!'s recipe section
without attributing it to her. The author of the recipes discovered this and
displayed the screen shots of Yahoo! Malayalam that carried the content of which
she alleged was lifted from her page.

When she wrote to Yahoo! pointing out the copy-paste job, the
company promptly removed the said content from its site but denied any copyright
violation saying, "The Malayalam story was provided to us by Webdunia on
the express representation that they are duly authorized by the author of the
story to publish it."

Bloggers United

Bloggers were irked by the Internet company's response of passing the buck to
Webdunia than take responsibility for the issue. In a bid to support
Suryagayathri, more than one hundred Indian blogs joined hands to protest the
alleged instances of plagiarism by Yahoo! India.

In a collective and unanimous gesture of solidarity, they
observed March 5 as the "Remove Plagiarism" day on their blogs.
Bloggers demanded an apology from Yahoo! and also gave vent to their feelings.
The movement took on the color of a David versus Goliath battle.

"It is a little amusing, amazing and agonizing to see how
the corporate world looks at the blogs and bloggers as silly little creatures,
which they can play with, manipulate and crush at their will," a blog
called Copyright Violations said.

Yet another irate food blogger who writes under the nickname Inji
Pennu (Ginger girl) wrote, "Why is this dear to me? Just because we
write and take pictures due to our passion for food and writing, and give the
content for free for others to cook and create, that doesn't mean someone can
take us for a ride and copy our content, especially a giant corporation like
Yahoo!"

Meanwhile, Yahoo! attempted to clear the air by issuing a
statement to the press on its stand. "We would like to clarify that the
allegation about Yahoo! India Malayalam portal copying six recipes is entirely
incorrect," a Yahoo! India spokesperson said. "We received a report
regarding one single recipe content. The content on Yahoo! India's Indian
language sites is provided by Webdunia under the express representation that
Webdunia has all the necessary rights and authorization for all the content
provided by them."

Webdunia said that it had tendered an apology to Suryagayathri.
Rajiv Singhi, CFO, Webdunia, said that while the company had been making umpteen
efforts to speak to the blogger and was also willing to compensate and credit
her for the recipe on the Yahoo! Malayalam page, she had not responded to its
attempts to contact her.

With pressure mounting on it, Yahoo! gave in and released a
statement that appeared in Malayalam on the Yahoo! Malayalam site regretting the
reproduction of content from a blog without attribution. The company said,
"Yahoo! respects the blogging community and the etiquette followed by
bloggers. We regret any inconvenience caused by the inadvertent posting of the
recipe without attribution."

"I don't want my
content to appear (with or without credit) in that portal as it doesn't
honor copyrights", says blogger Suryagayathri.

"I am an ordinary
housewife spending my free time and creativity by writing blogs. I do
not want my blog to be copied. If they have copied, they need to apologize
it on the Yahoo! portal. That's all I am asking for. Nothing else!"

"First of all, WebDunia's
CFO Rajiv Singhi is lying in every respect. WebDunia has not apologized so
far to me on Yahoo!'s portal as per our requirements conveyed over
phone. Instead, they sent mails to some bloggers, created a temporary blog
in wordpress with only a title, "Recipe Content" and
no other information in it and asked the bloggers to interact with
them online. As they did not make their intentions clear, bloggers did not
participate in this and they deleted the blog later, it seems. Kindly ask
them to show my statement about accepting their apology. An anonymous
comment with no email and address on my blog was put as Webdunia's
'apology'. They did not even agree to publish the apology in
English. Instead, they asked me to send a fax to them saying that
I agree for the use of the content. I cannot count it as an
official apology. Please avoid using Webdunia's or Yahoo!'s version of
the story to describe me."

"Even though I
contacted only Yahoo!, Yahoo! India without my permission passed on my
contact details to Webdunia. Giving credit to what I write is not the
question; in fact I don't want my content to appear (with or without
credit) in that portal as it doesn't honor copyrights."

"I am not surprised at
Yahoo! or WebDunia's statement."

"As the disputed
content appeared on Yahoo!'s portal, it is quite natural we expect at
least an apology from Yahoo!"

"They are big companies; they can do
anything while I can't. I only have truth by my side and lot of fellow
bloggers by my side."

These words were not enough to mollify Suryagayathri and
bloggers. She says that she is yet to receive an apology from Yahoo! and
contends that the company is skirting the main issue, which is copyright
violation.

Ctrl C + Ctrl V Syndrome

After CyberMedia News broke the news of this alleged plagiarism in
early March, a blogger wrote to this correspondent pointing out as many as 12
cases of content including photographs and even a poem had appeared on various
Yahoo! Indian language sites sans attribution to the blogs they were originally
published.

With global companies like Yahoo! looking to localize their
offerings in India, one of the difficulties they face is the paucity of regional
language content and experienced writers who are Internet-savvy and proficient
in local languages. In this scenario, copy-paste seems the easiest and
convenient alternative.

Blog Protection

Most blogs are covered under the Creative Commons License that entitles use
of content provided the author is attributed. Despite this, there have been many
instances of content lifted out of blogs that have appeared elsewhere.

Amit Verma, author of one of India's popular blogs, India
Uncut, recently experienced a case where an unknown person created a mirror
site of his blog and copied everything. Verma says that all content on blogs is
treated as published content and enjoys copyright protection by default.

Indian Copyright Law may be complex but is clear on one aspect.
It recognizes and blog entries including recipe content are also under the Act's
ambit as "literary works." "It is about giving expression to an
idea in an original form," said Pavan Duggal, Supreme Court lawyer and a
Cyber Law expert.

Duggal feels that Yahoo! being the network service provider, is
responsible for the content on its sites and not just the content service
provider, in this case, Webdunia.  

Na Vijay Shankar, another Cyber Law expert, suggests that
bloggers would have to discourage such content theft by providing a notice
explicitly stating that the content is copyrighted and reproduction and use for
commercial purposes would be done only with the writer's permission.

The two aspects that have emerged out of this whole episode is
the growing unity among bloggers, and the growing awareness and intolerance to
rampant plagiarism in cyberspace.

Priya Padmanabhan,
Cybermedia News

maildqindia@cybermedia.co.in