Yahoo apologizes to Indian housewife

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March 8, 2007, 08:29 AM —  IDG News Service — 

Yahoo Inc. apologized on Thursday after recipes from the blog of an Indian housewife were used without permission on Yahoo's India's new Malayalam-language Web portal.

The reproduction of the recipes, which were taken from a blog in Malayalam run by a housewife in Kerala, in Southern India, sparked an online protest among bloggers.

A Yahoo spokeswoman said the reproduction of the content was inadvertent and blamed the incident on a company it hired to develop content for its Web site, Webdunia.com (India) Pvt. Ltd.

Yahoo asked the content provider to remove the recipes when it learned of the incident and Webdunia has been in contact with the woman to apologize, the spokeswoman said.

Bloggers, however, were also demanding an apology from Yahoo. The company planned to post a statement on its Malayalam Web site later Thursday, the spokeswoman said, which reads, in part:

"Yahoo respects the blogging community and the etiquette followed by bloggers. We regret any inconvenience caused by the inadvertent posting of the recipe without attribution."

The content is provided to Yahoo with the understanding that Webdunia holds all necessary rights to its use, the company said.

The blogger was not immediately available for comment. Her blog now features a graphic urging "stop plagiarism."

As Internet use picks up in India, the number of news and entertainment portals has increased, but many have had difficult getting quality content in local languages.

Yahoo introduced portals in several local Indian languages in February, including the Malayalam site. Malayam is spoken predominantly in the state of Kerala.

IDG News Service

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