Stealing content that costs money to generate is becoming rampant. Moneylife has often been a victim of this criminal practice; among those stealing or plagiarizing our content are some reputed names

Moneylife Digital Team

Plagiarism or stealing of content has become rampant. As a small media group with limited resources to fight legal battle, we are often a victim of such theft. The theft occurs in many forms, whether it is republishing without credit to carefully removing bylines-we've seen it all.

But our report on SpeakAsia yesterday, that has been stolen and published on another website was a different surprise altogether.

Within hours of the SpeakAsia story going up on the Moneylife website, the report also appeared on LiveNewsVideos.com, a Lucknow-based site, after removing the byline of the Moneylife Digital Team and without attributing any credit either to Moneylife.in or SuchetaDalal.com. (See image below.)


The ease with which electronic text can be copy-pasted from other sites, has attracted many reporters, bloggers and even some websites to plagiarism of such sorts. It probably would get them some more hits. But what moral right to these institutions have to commit such acts and what credibility is left is the question.

This is not an isolated case. One blogger, admin, simply lifted Moneylife content on HT Parekh and posted it as his own on the Accommodation Times website.

Similarly, on 16th July last year, the Deccan Herald also used our content on the performance of lifestyle funds almost verbatim, merely changing the sequence of a few paragraphs. Again, they did not give any credit to Moneylife.  After we wrote to the editor, the Deccan Herald unpublished the story.

Some months ago, Malini Byanna, estranged wife of Vikram Akula, founder of SKS Microfinance, wrote a letter to Moneylife managing editor Sucheta Dalal. Based on this personal message and after due permission from Ms Byanna, Moneylife published a report. To our surprise, we subsequently found that some bloggers had used the content verbatim on their sites without mentioning the source of the content and without giving due credit to Moneylife. When, we sent them a mail warning them of copyright violation, some of them even argued that the letter by Ms Byanna was an open letter and that they could therefore use it the way they pleased. The fact remains that the letter was addressed specifically to Ms Dalal. Besides, why would Ms Byanna write an open letter about her personal matters to everyone? After our mails, the bloggers provided due credit and links to Moneylife.

We have, sometimes, allowed some bloggers to publish some parts of our stories, giving due credit and links to the original article. However, obviously there are some who believe they can steal our content and get away with it.

Another example is a report on the Right to Information (RTI), by Vinita Deshmukh, a columnist on Moneylife. The article was published by FeelEMinds.com, which claims to be a forum of executive education and learning after removing the names of Ms Deshmukh and any reference to Moneylife. Even after our mails and calls to the owner of the website, Preeti Pahwa, in Gurgaon, the article remains on the site. Strange as it is, the article bears the writer's name as 'by khannasaurabh', but continues to carry a short description about Ms Deshmukh at the end of the article. ("The writer is a senior editor, author and convener of Pune Metro Jagruti Abhiyaan".) This is the case of people, who claim to educate executives. The less said the better about other sites and bloggers.

According to Wikipedia, since the main currency of journalism is public trust, a reporter's failure to honestly acknowledge the source undercuts a newspaper or television news show's integrity and undermines its credibility. Journalists accused of plagiarism are often suspended from their reporting tasks while the charges are being investigated by the news organisation.

What the people indulging in plagiarism fail to understand is this is not just a question of copy-pasting, but amounts to copyright infringement. According to Wikipedia, copyright infringement is a violation of the rights of a copyright holder, when material restricted by copyright is used without consent.

Article 50 of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) requires that signatory countries enable courts to remedy copyright infringement with injunctions and the destruction of infringing products, and award damages. More recently, copyright holders have demanded that states provide criminal sanctions for all types of copyright infringement, Wikipedia says.