Wednesday, March 07, 2007

കൈപ്പള്ളി :: Kaippally - Yahoo's Copyright infringement on Malayalam Blog content.

The idea that intellectual content should be available for public consumption is as old as the written word itself. Providing attribution to that intellectual creation has also been the foundation of learning and ultimately our value system.

That's what motivates us to create. We as a species love applause. We adore our heroes. And our heroes love the adoration. And that applause eventually translates to a fee. The content is free but some one has created it. The author also bears responsibity for the content.

There exists a parallel ideology that removes the attribution element from the equation altogether. Thereby removing any transaction availed from its creation. Since there is no creator. No one owes anything to anyone. The drawback of this sort of information is it is free from any responsibility as well. Anyone is free to copy, modify, and freely distribute it. Since no one pays for it, no one is responsible for that information, that information also has no intrinsic value.

It is possible for both these ideas to co-exist. As long authorship is made explicitly clear.

However when one steals work attributed to another individual and lay claim to its creation. The authenticity, and the entire value system collapses. There arises a dangerous trend which could lead to intellectual anarchy. The bastardification of content. Content with no parents. No value and no responsibility. Like those countless e-mail forwards we receive. Those pretty pictures someone took. Those beautiful verses someone wrote.

Those are content that were orphaned by some ruthelss priate, from some unknown wesite.

Even if there is no mention of copyright or the copyright symbol, Information that has authorship mentioned in very clear terms is subject to laws of copyright in certain countries. If found by a competent court beyond reasonable doubt, The suspect could face fines and/or jail terms.

Recently the Malayalam portal of Yahoo.com blatantly copied content without consent from an independent Malayalam blog and posted the content on Yahoo Malayalam without any attribution whatsoever. Yahoo has miserably failed to wriggle out of the situation by denying any wrong doing.

Yahoo claims that it cannot be responsible for the actions committed by their regional content provider.

Yahoo has also provided its own copyright notice on the portal. Which actually means. Yahoo can copy content from blogs and put it on its portal and claim copyright if someone else copies it.

Now I would say thats a plain and simple fucked up system. Don't you think? Yahoo claiming parenthood of some one elses creation.

Lets stop yahoo from making our creations into other peoples bastards. Stop the Bastardification of our content.


What do you think?

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posted by സ്വാര്‍ത്ഥന്‍ at 10:04 AM

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