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Home » Public Service Announcement

Plagiarism by Big Media

1 October 2008 3 Comments

Sudipta wants bloggers to wake up:

Bloggers, wake up! For long the mainstream media has been plagiarising pictures from our blogs for long. And they seem to get away with it with impunity. Because they don’t respond to emails. They don’t publish letters sent to the editor about their reporters lifting images with impunity. How can they — these losers can’t stand up to own their mistakes; . . . They copy images, text, opinions, and they aren’t man enough to acknowledge the source: let alone ask for permission or compensate monetarily. Twilight Fairy, Archana, Bobinson have pointed it out before. And now, Shrinidhi finds one of his pics on the Times of India.

So how does one respond to theft? By reporting it. And by using the law. But then, you have to have laws against intellectual property theft and have the time, money and persistence to go through with an expensive and protracted legal case. But what about petty intellectual theft? It’s possible but very unlikely that any individual has the capacity to drag something like The Times of India to court.

I guess that in the case of petty plagiarism of the sort that Sudipta is pointing at, the remedy is that sufficient people call “Shame on you!” Perhaps the word will get around and will deter theft.

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3 Comments »

  • Watch your content!! « ramblings of an aimless mind said:

    [...] I came across the news of the Times of India plagiarising photographs from blogs after reading Atanu’s post and following it up with Sudipta’s post on the matter and Shrinidhi’s first hand [...]

    # 1 October 2008 at 2:38 pm
  • nitibhan said:

    Times of India and The Economic Times, two of the once very respected publications in print over a decade ago are among the worst offenders.

    What can we do, as bloggers, as we find phrases and words directly lifted from our writing and used in the MSM of India.

    Till now I thought I had no recourse, but I’m quite serious about actually getting together with others to do something about this issue. I’m tired of concept theft, so to speak.

    Niti Bhan
    Perspective 2.0
    http://www.emergingfutureslab.com

    # 3 October 2008 at 2:22 pm
  • India Today plagiarizes Playboy magazine’s center-spread | Faking News said:

    [...] centre-spread from India Today. However, on being reminded that India Today and Playboy were not blogs run by ordinary citizens who couldn’t fight their lone, hapless battles against media behemoths [...]

    # 10 November 2010 at 6:31 am