Naavi.org has believed on knowledge dissemination and through out the 20 years of existence tried to spread knowledge freely. In the process, when some body wants to publish any article of their own on Naavi.org, I have obliged if the content is of relevance to the audience who frequent Naavi.org. When such content is published, Naavi.org would be an “Intermediary” and would be liable as per the provisions of ITA 2000/8 and also be able to claim the benefits of exemption from liability under Section 79 of ITA 2000/8.
But some times, people may misuse the facility of allowing guest posts.
One such occasion arose recently, when I received a request from a person named Badal Patel from myadvo.in. The article was titled “GDPR Compliance Checklist for Indian Companies”.
On February 29, 2020, I received an email as follows:
Hi,
I would love to provide a guest contribution to your blog. I’m also open to any of your ideas as well.
Anytime I guest post on a prominent blog like yours I always make sure to do 1200+ words, with images and data to back up any points I make.
I promise there will be no fluff, just actionable advice.
Let me know what you think. I’m excited to hear back from you.
Keep Up The Good Work.
Best Regards
Badal
The sender was identified as
Badal Patel
Digital Marketing Executive
+917307390190
Plot No. 80, 4th Floor, Sector 44, Gurugram, Haryana – 122003, India
Very recently, on June 29, I received an email from Ms Jissy Joy, a student of National University of Advanced Legal Studies, Kochi that the said article was actually written by her and given to Myadvo.in for publication. Jissy wanted the article to be taken down as it was a copyright infringement.
As an intermediary, Naavi.org sent a notice to M’s Badal but did not receive any reply or explanation. Though the article can now be taken down, it appeared that better justice would be done to Ms Jissy if the article remains under publication with the note that a copyright infringement notice has been received.
Accordingly the following note was appended to the article:
[This guest post was published at the request of badal@myadvo.in. An objection has been received on 29th June 2020 stating that the article was originally written by Ms Jiss Joy for publication in myadvo.in and there is a copyright infringement. A request has been sent to Ms Badal Patel for confirmation for taking down the article. If no counter objection is received from Ms Badal Patel within a reasonable time, this article will be taken down…. Naavi..29th June 2020]
Now, whoever reads the article, will give credit to Jissy and understand that she might have been wronged. I thought this would be a better relief to Jissy than merely taking down the article and let Badal enjoy the benefits of publication of this article between March and June.
Since I have not so far received any counter from Badal or Myadvo.in, I thought that this incident needs to be highlighted both for the benefit of Jissy as well as to advocate a strategy for addressing such issues.
By keeping the article with the said note, it is felt that the beneficial use of the infringement has been prevented.
I would like to have the comments from others to this method of countering plagiarism.
Naavi
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About Vijayashankar Na
Naavi is a veteran Cyber Law specialist in India and is presently working from Bangalore as an Information Assurance Consultant. Pioneered concepts such as ITA 2008 compliance, Naavi is also the founder of Cyber Law College, a virtual Cyber Law Education institution. He now has been focusing on the projects such as Secure Digital India and Cyber Insurance
