BANGALORE: Yahoo! India today responded to the allegation of plagiarism against its Malayalam portal and said the content provider had apologized to the blogger.
However, the blogger said she wanted Yahoo to publish the apology on its Malayalam portal, which she alleged had carried content from her blog. (See box below)
Surya Gayathri, a blogger, had alleged that the beta version of Yahoo! Malayalam had lifted six recipes from her blog without her knowledge.
“We would like to clarify that the allegation about Yahoo! India Malayalam portal copying six recipes is entirely incorrect,” a Yahoo! India spokesperson today said in an e-mail.
“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,” she told CyberMedia News.
Bloggers accuse Yahoo of plagiarism
The Yahoo spokesperson further added that when the incident was reported, Webdunia removed the recipe content immediately, to avoid any unnecessary conflict. “We understand that Webdunia has apologized for the inadvertent posting of the recipe content without attribution. Webdunia also contacted the concerned person and we understand that Webdunia is in touch with this person to resolve the issue amicably.”
Webdunia on its part removed the content in question and tendered an apology to Surya Gayathri and has been making efforts to contact her.
“We have been making umpteen efforts to speak to the blogger and are also willing to compensate and credit her for the recipe on the Yahoo! Malayalam page, but she has never responded to our attempts (to contact her),” Rajiv Singhi, CFO, Webdunia, said.
However, Surya Gayatri is not happy. (See box below for her version)
Singhi says that the recipes appeared on the Yahoo Malayalam page when one of its editors inadvertently took the recipe without crediting the blogger.
“Such a case has never happened in the seven years of our existence,” he said.
Webdunia provides content in seven Indian languages to Yahoo!.
Big companies can do anything
I don't want my content to appear (with or without credit) in that portal where they don'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 CEO [sic] 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 where they don'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.”
© CyberMedia News
