I am occasionally told by friendly magazine publishers that they routinely cut and paste wine articles from delWine. I feel flattered that they find the material worth publishing second-hand.
Similarly, I wrote another article for a publication and was pleasantly surprised when I was informed by many friends that they had read it in another magazine from the same publisher. I did not create a shindig as I had been paid for the article.
Who has the rights to such an article- the author or the publisher? I am not sure of the legal position in India but a couple of journalist friends tell me that the rights are with the publishers once it was given to them for publication and that was that.
Therefore, I was unpleasantly surprised to receive a legal notice from a New York law firm a few months ago. Reason: I had published an article from an India-centric US lifestyle magazine authored by an NRI. The firm represented the author of the article. I don't remember the contents but I had found it interesting enough for our viewers to have requested the magazine editor to allow us to publish the article. The authorisation came promptly the next day with the usual stipulation to acknowledge the magazine as the source of the article. This duly attended to, we moved on…
….till 3 years later when I received the legal notice. We were pleased to block the article from the website immediately. Of course, it took me some time to locate the authorisation from the editor, which I passed on to the law firm whose Indian-origin client was satisfied and the matter was dropped.
I am still not clear about the legal aspects. For any article reproduced from the net, it is a courtesy to give due credit to the original source of publication. In its reverse form I have seen many online and newspapers borrowing my articles or the contents, duly giving delWine the credit.
I will be curious and happy if you could share your views and help me with the dilemma. Swimming through the pleasant task of sharing and disseminating useful information on the web to help motivate people to drink wine, it is neither the intent nor is there fun in rubbing someone on the wrong side.
Subhash Arora |