Protesting Plagiarism by MSM
Recently, newly launched Yahoo-Malayalam portal published recipes from a blog by Surya Gayathri, a fellow food blogger from India, without permission or giving credit to her work. Total 6 recipes, word by word are lifted and republished. When protested about it, Yahoo silently removed the content without an apology or compensation to the blogger. Not only Surya Gayathri, we the food bloggers community do not think she has been treated fairly by Yahoo. So today is protest day against Yahoo and other stealers.
It started small. Few online editions of news magazines started lifting content and images from food blogs. Now it looks like almost everybody in Indian publishing industry seems to be doing it. From big names like India Times to famous online publications such as Sify, Bawarchi and Rediff are publishing content, mainly images from food blogs without permission or compensating the food blogger. This is not fair, this is copyrights violation and it must stop.
We know that there are not that many images of Indian food on the web. We understand the temptation to steal. But really, you don’t need to get that desperate. Just ask. We will be more than happy to lend the content. Request permission first. Compensate us like you do your photographers or at least provide a link to our blogs. We, the food bloggers are a happy, genial bunch most of the times. Acknowledge us and respect our work. This is my sincere request to the editors of the Indian news papers. Please put a stop to this frequent shameful and painful content theft.
If any of you readers are lawyers, who specialize in copyrights, we please need your assistance. Would you like to help and do some pro bono work on behalf of us food bloggers? Not only Yahoo, we have several big names in Indian publishing industry who are regular content stealers. Many Indian bloggers are victims and attempts by us to contact the editors were failed to generate a response. I would like to see something positive come out of this protest and we need your help very much.
My salute to Surya Gayathri for standing up to Yahoo and to Inji Pennu for organizing the today’s event. I ask you all to participate in the protest. Show your support to the food blogging community. Contact Yahoo and let them know about what you think of this matter.
Logo credit:
Sandeepa of Bong Mom’s CookBook. Thanks Sandeepa!
