Blogathon on plagiarism on October 2

This is an initiative by Sudipta Chaterjee. In response to my concern of TOI lifting one of my photographs from internet and several other such incidents wherein print media has effortlessly lifted someone else’s intellectual property from internet, (blogs, journals, websites, flikr etc) and published them without credit or royalty in their commercial publications.

In order to counter this, Sudipta suggests that we all blog about “Plagiarism by Media” on October 2nd using one of the powerful weapons we've all got-our blogs. [Read his post] If you don’t have a blog you can spread awareness by means of comments. You may not understand the significance now, unless until you become the victim, when someone else takes credit for your work.

I support this initiative and request all of you to join in. You only need to write a post about this issue in your blog on October 2, 2008. If you’re wondering what exactly you can write on 2nd October regarding this topic, here’re few ideas:

Your post can:

• Express solidarity to those who have been victims of plagiarism
• Suggest ideas how to counter when someone finds his/her text/image stolen and published without credit
• Tell How to effectively detect plagiarism (other than accidentally spotting it)
• Suggest tips on how to protect your images from being lifted 
• Advise How to prove that you’re the original owner of that IP
• Detail Regulatory and legal options available to individuals to fight this
• Mention about Websites/agencies/NGOs that can be approached for support/guidance
• And any such related matters

Thanks in advance.

Also thanks to all my readers for expressing their support. Thanks to Mridula for spreading the word in Blogbhathi, IM and her blog. Thanks to Nikhil and to all readers of our company’s internal blog and of Mouthshut for the support extended.

As of now there’s been no updates as such. The mails sent to TOI through generic email Ids available in the newspaper haven’t fetched any reply. I’ll keep you posted.