Indian bloggers spot more Yahoo copyright violations

IDG News Service - Yahoo Inc.'s problems with Indian bloggers over unauthorized reproduction of their content on its Indian portals may be just beginning.

Bloggers claim they have identified more instances of their content being reproduced without permission on Yahoo's Indian portals. Yahoo's Indian subsidiary has yet to come up with an appropriate response that satisfies the bloggers.

After bloggers complained about Yahoo India's unauthorized publication of recipes from a blogger called Su, the subsidiary apologized on Thursday. In a statement, it said it regretted any inconvenience caused by the inadvertent Yahoo's Indian subsidiary on its Malayalam-language portal.

Yahoo did not refer to Su or her blog by name, and also blamed the mistake on its content provider Webdunia.com (India) Pvt. Ltd. A Malayalam-language version of the statement was posted by Yahoo on its Malayalam portal, but that did not satisfy the bloggers.

The issue is not about Yahoo publishing her content without attribution, said Su reacting to Yahoo's statement in an e-mail Saturday. The bloggers, whose content she said was stolen, are fighting against Yahoo violating their copyrights, she wrote.

Su has demanded a written apology from Yahoo for allegedly stealing her blog content. The blogger describes herself as a housewife from Kerala in south India in her blog.

She said that her next step would be to take the dispute to court on a number of charges including copyright violation, if "Yahoo keeps on washing their hands off and tries to do a mockery of an apology."

Bloggers in India are also compiling a list of content allegedly stolen from them by Yahoo's content provider, and posted to Yahoo's portals in India. The 12 incidents of copyright violation and content theft identified so far may be only be the tip of the iceberg, a blogger wrote Sunday.

The content on Yahoo's seven Indian languages portals is provided by Webdunia.com under the express representation that Webdunia.com has all the necessary rights and authorization for all the content provided by them, Yahoo India said last week. Yahoo India did not comment on the most recent allegations by bloggers, but a spokeswoman said on Monday that the company is likely to issue another statement soon.