A Mention in the Business Standard

OKTATA and Mahindra, Is it OK?

Jai Arjun Singh has written an article in Business Standard on the Tata/Oktatabyebye standoff and Travel Tales from India has found a mention there-

As the website Travel Tales from India (http://tinyurl.com/l7p9av) puts it, “Tata owns the Jaguar and Land Rover car brands, the Taj Mahal Hotel and a very profitable software company. But do they own the English word Tata too? Looks like they think so. Even when the word has been in existence since 1823, much before the company website itself starts talking about its heritage!”

Not too many updates at the Oktatabyebye site but then I am sure there hands are full.

Oktatabyebye.com can't use the word 'Tata'?

I thought that Tata was an English word apart from being the name of the business house controlled by Tatasons. The dictionary link above says that the word Tata has been in use since 1823 and the Tata Sons website uses 1868 as the starting point of their 'heritage'. To my readers from other countries Tata is the same company that now owns Jaguar and Land Rover car brands. It is the same company that owns hotels the Taj Mahal Hotel that came under terrorist attacks in Mumbai. They own a very profitable software company named Tata Consulting Services.

But do they own the English word Tata too? Looks like they think so. They went after Oktatabyebye.com, (owned by makemytrip.com) a travel portal telling that the website can't use the word Tata! Even when the word has been in existence since 1823 much before the company website itself starts talking about its heritage! Here is what Oktatabyebye.com is saying-

Very recently, TATA Sons filed a case against us (oktatabyebye.com) in infringement of their TATA name (as our domain name contains the 'TATA' word!). Tata Sons has contended that it is confusingly similar to its 'Tata' brand and the travel portal runner has no rights or legitimate interests to use it. The company had argued that the site infringed the right of its registered trademark/service mark 'Tata'.

And in a decision by a sole panelist, ownership of the domain OkTataByeBye.com has been awarded to TATA by WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) Arbitration and Mediation Centre.

Who would the Tata Sons like to go after next? The kids who say tata to each-other or the non-Tata owned trucks (yes they make trucks too) that write 'tata' at the back of the truck as truck art?

Hope some sense and perspective will prevail in this case and the travel portal Oktatabyebye.com remains the same.

Update 1: Found this news article on the Oktatabyebye issue in TOI.

Update 2: Wrote a mail to the address available from the 'contact us' page of the Tata Sons website voicing my opinion, if I get a reply I will append it here.

Update 3:

Fly You Fools - Indian Comics about Life.

Bloggers Vs. NDTV

You must have come across it by now. A blog post criticizing NDTV and Burkha Dutt, highhandedness by NDTV and now the blogshphere up in arms.

Follow it at Blogbharti.

Follow it at Desipundit.

Another Case of Lifting a Picture by Mudra?

PlaneMad reports that a picture taken by him was lifted by Mudra (the Ad agency from Wikipedia)!

But when i see a big print ad for a reputed online property portal that too by a respected agency in one of the leading english daily, skimping photography charges by stealing photos off wikipedia, you wouldn’t exaclty expect me to smile about it.

Cross posted at Blogbharti.

MSM (Mint) on MSM Lifting Images from Blogs in India

Mint did an article on Mainstream media lifting images from blogs and I thought it was a good one. It didn't even spare the home publication Hindustan Times-

The Hindustan Times, which is published by HT Media Ltd, has also faced similar allegations. For instance, Archana S.R., a Bangalore-based photographer, blogged last month that a Mumbai supplement of the Hindustan Times had reproduced her photo of an eco-friendly Ganesha idol, without permission.

“We would not tolerate any infringement of copyright, be it infringement on the part of our journalists or someone else infringing on (our) copyright,” says Sanjoy Narayan, recently appointed editor-in-chief of the Hindustan Times. “There is a need for greater awareness all around about the sensitivity of copyrights. Digital media is relatively new in India, and sometimes people don’t realize that creative work online is also published under copyrights.”

Mint, which is also published by HT Media, has specific guidelines for its staff on both text and photos as part of its Code of Conduct, which says: “We don’t copy the work of others… We do not plagiarize, meaning that we do not take the work of others and pass it off as our own.” (The full Code is available on Mint’s website, www.livemint.com.)

Times of India Plagiarizes Again

Times of India seems to be in regular habit plagiarizing. This time it is a photograph by Shrinidhi in their Chennai supplement.

I’d clicked this photo few months back at Marina beach and had uploaded it to my blog. Some users have referred to this image in some forum discussions also and incidently, if you search for Chennai police car in google, this image comes first.

I also feel that if your image comes on the first page of Google images, the chances of it getting lifted are more!

And fellow contributor Jo has complied a list of plagiarism incidents by media.

Cross Posted at Blogbharti

Times of India Downloads Picture from Flickr and then Acts Funny

Twilight Fairy wrote to me about her picture being flicked by Times of India newspaper and the editor a Ms. Poonam Singh is now acting funny. And in her comment section you can find another user saying his/her picture was flicked by Economic Times. Shame on TOI.

Well, I clearly understand that it was not the editor herself stealing my image, but some downtrodden employee. But then undoubtedly, Ms. Poonam Singh, who represents the Times of India, is not performing her job of being an editor, if her employees are violating copyrights! Who is responsible for educating employees about copyright violation and the legal ramifications of it? How come the Indian publishing industry takes this so lightly, whereas the Indian IT industry (of which I am a part) takes IPR’s, patents and copyright violations so seriously that they throw out employees who download pirated mp3’s on their machines? I have undergone trainings on ethics a zillion times in my career. We have had several instances of audits, policies stuffed down our throats and what not. Why? Because the Indian IT industry takes this matter seriously. On the other hand, nauseatingly so, the Indian publishing industry takes this as its birthright!

Off Topic- Thai Airways Espnstar.com Wimbledon Contest

You know, sometimes I do things on a whim, without any rhyme or reason! I watch Tennis a lot, at least I try to catch up all the grand slams. No, no watching Tennis is not what I am calling doing things without a rhyme or reason.

I tried to predict the winners for Wimbledon 2008 at Thai Airways ESPNStar.com Contest. Now that clearly belongs to 'doing things without rhyme or reason.'

But it got curiouser from there. I am using Mozilla Firefox and I tried filling out the form. Jeez it would not let me pick 'female' as my gender. And I must say that is mighty irritating. I mean in this age and time? Could be a bug? That is a stupid bug if it is.

Could be a malware/virus on my computer. But then if you have sometime to spare and if you use firefox would you please try this and let me know if it is a virus or not?

PS. I picked Roger Federer and Svetlana Kuznetsova as my winners. I am bored with Federer winning Wimbledon so many times but then he has not won anything this year and I am sure he is going to try hard. Kuznetsova I picked up on a whim! She also seems to be in form.

PPS. I am mailing to the good folks at contest@espnstar.com too. Let us see if there is something in this or if it is just my computer.

Update 1- Asked a friend who was online to try this out for me. She says she too can't pick 'female' as her gender in Firefox but can do so in IE. Now I have no idea what percent of the market is with Firefox but it is a mighty decent browser. Were the ESPN Star guys rushing when they did the site?

Off Topic- Specimen of Brilliance

I thought I have come a long way in ignoring a typical IIT UG rant (let me state at the outset that at IIT I belonged really to the scum of the earth category 'HSS Ph.D.' That is doing a Ph.D. in Humanities and Social Sciences). Most of the times I don't even bat an eyelid when some of them come and leave comments on posts written long back and tell me-

"Btw its a classic case of UG's not giving two hoots about the PG's whom they consider inferior. I guess some of the blame lies with PGs too. They dont participate in anyway in the institue activities and are generally aloof and tend to keep to themselves thereby promoting stereotypification.

In case you are curious, I am a second year UG." (Emphasis mine)

I mean I have grown such a thick skin that I don't even reply to such comments anymore.

But yesterday was different. I read an article by one of the specimens of brilliance, a Mr. Aditya Jha in Indian Express. For most of the time I was reading what has been said before, if you open too many IITs (as the HRD minister is said to be planning) brand IIT gets diluted. Then Mr. Jha really demonstrates his brilliance when he says-

"Brand IIT is not about IITs; it’s about IIT-ians. And, mostly, it is about undergraduate IIT-ians at that. People who have done M-Tech from IITs always feel discriminated against. Since they never cracked the JEE, there’s no way they will be accepted into the tribe."

Will someone go and remind Mr. Jha that the company he works for (Infosys) was co-founded by an IIT Kanpur PG. Yes, Mr. Narayan Murthi undoubtedly did a PG course from IITK and still founded a company like Infosys that employs the likes of Mr. Jha. But this could be a little too much for the brilliance of Mr. Jha to comprehend.

Mr. Murthi has said in his speeches (I have attended one such speech at IITK myself long back) that he got through JEE but could not study at IIT because of the high costs. Now one also wonders if Mr. Jha thinks just clearing the JEE is the sign of brilliance or actually doing an UG course would also do something to a person? Whatever the likes of Mr Jha think, I think Mr. Murthi did fine for himself even if he just did a PG course from IITK.

Update- After reading Sidhu's comment on this post, I went back to the article and checked the comment section of the article on IITs. Left a comment of my own too. The comments are much more balanced, I have to say.