Hindustan Times doesn’t seem to understand Intellectual Property
Hindustan Times, a national newspaper no less, seems to be completely ignorant of the concept of Intellectual Property Rights. Or maybe they don’t care. In today’s edition (or maybe yesterday, I have no idea), it published a photograph that is stolen from Nita’s blog. It was first published on a post titled, “Impact of coaching classes on a nation’s psyche”, on her blog. I say stolen, because they have not bothered to acknowledge the source, nor have they paid her for the use of the photograph. Let me say this, the little regard I had for our “national” media is now gone. They have no business being in the field if they cannot respect other people’s intellectual rights. This stealing is in clear violation of the Creative Commons license under which most bloggers publish their work. We blog because we like to. We receive little or no money for the work we do, and yet we do it because we love to do it. That a reputed newspaper can behave in such a petty manner disgusts me to no end. If you are reading this, do what you can to register your protest against this violation of rights by Hindustan Times.
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4 Comments
Nita
Thanks Amrutha. It was in today’s paper (HT’s Mumbai edition) and it wasn’t even a very good photo, I don’t know why they took it! I took it from a moving car and it was slightly blurred but the fact that they still took it shows how desperate they are. I have a nasty feeling that HT does this on a regular basis. It’s easy, just go to google images and take the image! And preferably take it from a blogger in some other town so he/she will never find out. Imagine the amount of money they will save this way!
Nita writes
I agree with what my namesake has to do. This is the bane of modern technology. Everyone talks about intellectual property, however in actual fact, that concept simply doesn’t exist on the internet.
I would suggest you start tweaking your blog a bit so others find it impossible to take stuff off it. By that, I mean disabling the right-mouse click functionality.
I’ll let you know how its done soon.
Amrutha
But Nita, if someone is determined to copy, no amount of effort on our part is going to deter them right? In Firefox, you can copy stuff even if I were to disable the right-click functionality. It’s an open-source software and anyone can invent a plug-in to make it work. The solution is to rise a voice against such injustice. HT has done what it did because it believes that a single blogger cannot take on a huge newspaper making millions every year. Maybe public pressure will make a difference… that’s what we are trying to achieve here.
Nita writes
I’m really keen on getting this latest incident public. How do we start though? Nita has heaps of bloggers sympathizing with her; me included… but we need something radical to get this out in the open.
There’s got to be a way… do you know anyone that works for a news channel of somekind?