Since yesterday, much spleen has been vented regarding the lifting of creative commons and copyrighted content from the Internet by Indian media publications. This is by no means a new phenomenon, but now a twitter account - Chori_in (chori means theft in Hindi) and a google group (Say No To Plagiarism) has been created to track instances of copyright violation. At the same time, Sachin Kalbag, Senior Editor, Mail Today tweeted that the publication has "banned the use of googled images" as a policy unless they are free-to-use stock images, and in one instance, reprimanded a copy editor and compensated the photographer in question, thus throwing down the gauntlet for other publications. Mail Today is daily newspaper from the India Today Group, backed by Associated Newspapers, the publishers of the Daily Mail. MediaNama spoke with Mail Today Editor Bharat Bhushan on the publications policy regarding copyright content, crediting and online photographs. Could you elaborate on the policy that you've instituted regarding online photographs? We believe in respecting copyright. If the picture is copyrighted we get permission from the photographer, pay for it and then use it. We don't believe in stealing pictures and it's not a fair practice. We discourage people to just lift stuff off the net, unless it explicitly says that it's a promotional picture, for example, films have promotional pictures. Otherwise we like to pay for pictures and get permission, and have a straight deal, which is fair to photographers, and is good journalistic practice. There have…
