Yahoo regrets using blogger's recipe

BANGALORE: Yahoo India today expressed regrets for reproducing content from a blog without attribution.

A Yahoo spokesperson on Thursday night told this correspondent that it had posted a statement, regretting the incident, on the recipe section of its Malayalam portal that reproduced the bloggers' post.

Yahoo said in the statement that it "respects the blogging community and the etiquette followed by bloggers. We regret any inconvenience caused by the inadvertent posting of the recipe without attribution."

The controversial content was published in the beta version of Yahoo Malayalam. The content was originally posted in a blog by one Surya Gayatri, who introduced herself as an "ordinary housewife."

She alleged that Yahoo Malayalam had published a few of recipes from her blog without her consent.

Bloggers accuse Yahoo of plagiarism

The Yahoo statement further said: "The content on Yahoo! India's language portal is provided by Webdunia under the express representation that Webdunia has all the necessary rights and authorization for all the content provided by them. When this incident was reported, the recipe content was immediately removed to avoid any unnecessary conflict."

Yahoo earlier had asked Webdunia to remove the content taken from the blog after bloggers joined hands against "plagiarism." They demanded an apology from Yahoo and observed March 5 as “Remove Plagiarism” day.

'Elusive blogger' wants Yahoo to apologise



Yahoo India added in the statement that it was "concerned about the sentiments of the blogging community as we completely endorse the values of blogging on the Internet."

Earlier, the content provider for Yahoo’s Malayalam Web site, Webdunia, said that it had tendered an apology to the blogger, whose recipes were copied onto Yahoo Malayalam.

Yahoo India launched portals in seven Indian languages, including Malayalam, in February this year.

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