Blogger Intimidation

Typical scenario in the blogosphere – blogger finds content ripped off the blog and posted on some random portal and complains to a portal citing content theft from her blog. The usual reaction from portals is ignoring the complaint and probably quietly removing the content. The best case scenario is pleading ignorance, apologizing, and removing the copied content. Even portals like Yahoo and Sulekha were found guilty of plagiarizing blog content. But when the portal inexplicably resorts to intimidation, abuse, and even cyber-stalking, it seriously doesn’t understand the power of the Internet. Inji Pennu shares her email exchange with Kerals.com [via tip sent to DesiPundit] which transcends all level of ridiculousness and even resorts to good cop-bad cop behavior in trying to scare the blogger. I must applaud Inji Pennu for persisting and exposing this joke of a portal.

By their own admission, the first angry response was prompted by some random post elsewhere by the blogger that seemed to offend a particular staffer at the portal. Not a single response seemed mature and the portal continued to indulge in irrelevant ad-hominem attacks. Predictably she has received tons of support from the blogosphere and bloggers are rallying by spreading the word. The portal says in one email that they do not care what Yahoo or Google does but after few months when everyone forgets about this incident and moves on, Google cache will still remember and continue to haunt them; deservedly so. It reminds me of the IIPM incident few years back.


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  • http://hawkeyeview.blogspot.com hawkeye

    the reality is that such blatant plagiarism is the easiest to capture. Although this case seems to be really wierd. I almost get a feeling that the website owners have no clue of the online world (its ironic – i know).

    In most cases of plagiarism, small bits and pieces of your idea gets stolen and some other (reasonably reputed) blogger is queitly absorbing your ideas and some of your trademarks. These are grey cases that cant be called out easily w/o attracting derision. But they are plagiarism nonetheless.

  • http://www.suyogdeshpande.net/blog/ Supremus

    I read through that entire post this morning – it gets weirder and weirder. For some reason it made me feel that people responding to her are simply some over-horny teenagers playing a nasty prank on her. If this is real, then it is quite amazing – but then again, with so many porn entities that they own, I won’t be surprised if they still live in last century!

    Very amusing and disturbing indeed!

    S

  • http://www.ipatrix.com Patrix

    Hawkeye, you would be surprised that how many people fail to understand the true nature of the web in spite of being regular users. And plagiarism is often not treated as harshly in India as it is elsewhere. Copying someone’s content is surprisingly considered fair game.

    Supremus, yeah! the email exchange continue to surprise and shock me as it progressed and I doubt they are pranksters. But the disturbing part is that these people think that they can get away by threatening and intimidating a lone blogger and guess they vastly underestimate the blogosphere’s networking abilities. Guess they’ll learn it the hard way.

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  • anuj_anuj

    sad! :( something wrong with theindicast.com, I get error message every time,
    every time! and from every computer I try, I think it is related to that dumb
    video he is trying to embed into every page, please please please tell them
    to fix it :( so sad, I need something interesting to read/listen to
    and your blog is too boring, my god, edit edit edit, I dont want to know every
    waking thought you have, what is the point, next you’ll have a list of
    times you brushed your teeth, times you went to sleep, how long your hair is
    each day ack!
    error message, the one I get says this everytime,\

    “Internet Explorer cannot open the Internet site “http://www.theindicast.com/
    index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7900349&Itemid=62.
    Operation aborted.”

  • http://www.ipatrix.com Patrix

    anuj_anuj, Now thats an excellent way of asking for help by insulting the author on whose blog you are asking help for. Regarding my blog being too boring for you, I must say that gun I’m holding to your head forcing you to read my blog must feel quite intimidating.

  • anuj_anuj

    no no, insult never, just some constructive criticism, all in best to help you out
    thats all, you need to edit your stuff, thats all, a very small easy fix, you
    can take a little advise, a small fix to help, otherwise your stuff is cool

  • http://rohanpinto.com Rohan Pinto

    whew !!! it was’nt me :-(
    {{wipes sweat}}

    Google cache will still remember and continue to haunt them;
    ———– very true

    deservedly so
    ———– i’m unsure…

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