Linda Ikeji ignored my warnings — Aye Dee, man behind popular blog’s fall, speaks by Ben Ezeamalu

 

As the initial shock over Google’s removal of popular news and entertainment site, Linda Ikeji blog, begins to wane, one of those instrumental to the shutdown of the site said Ms. Ikeji ignored his repeated complaints over copyright infringement and plagiarism.
Mukhtar Dan’Iyan, the Editor-in-Chief of US-based The 15 Past Eight Media Group, said he merely spoke up after the blog used his tweets about developments in the war against the Boko Haram insurgency without his permission.
“I spoke up about the unauthorised use of my intellectual property that was taken from my TL (time line),” Mr. Dan’Iyan, who tweets via @MrAyeDee, told PREMIUM TIMES in an interview, Wednesday.
“(I) filed a formal DMCA complaint to Google which hosted her site.
“One complaint is not enough. But safe to assume when Google looked through other examples of unauthorised IP usage and other IP owners filing complaints, it all added up.
“I emailed her (Linda Ikeji) repeatedly. And it was not the first time people had plagiarised my content, but usually, I reach out and they take it down,” Mr. Dan’Iyan added.
A Digital Copyright Millenium Act, DMCA, is an avenue to report content that you would like removed from Google’s services under applicable laws.
According to Mr. Dan’Iyan, Ms. Ikeji had used over 10,000 copyrighted pictures and stories over the past five years without the authorisation of the copyright owners.
Google took down the blog on Wednesday following multiple allegations of copyright infringement.
Ms. Ikeji did not respond to our enquiries Wednesday.
Mr. Dan’Iyan’s accusations and subsequent threats of organising a class action against the popular blogger drew the ire of the numerous fans who accused him of envy and hate.
In her response on Tuesday to the accusations, Ms. Ikeji dismissed the plagiarism allegations and accused Mr. Dan’Iyan of using another name, Emmanuel Efremov, to stalk her, as well as register almost ten of her domain names.
But Mr. Dan’Iyan said Mr. Efremov is one of the directors in his company.
“15Past8.com has owners like any other company. He’s one of them,” Mr. Dan’Iyan said.
“Emmanuel (Efremov) has never tried to sell anything to Linda, nor has he ever demanded any sort of money from her. In fact, I doubt he’s ever had any interaction with here even in passing.”
Efforts to reach Google on Wednesday were not successful.
While the class action against Ms. Ikeji (whose blog is still ranked No. 10 on the Alexa rankings of Top 500 sites in Nigeria) and Google is still gathering momentums, Mr. Dan’Iyan said he had backed out.
“People are sending stuff in, but hopefully, when she bounces back, as I know she will, she will be the paragon of accountability when it comes to using material,” he said.
“In other words, she’ll only use that which she got permission for, this way tempers would cool and lawsuit won’t proceed by aggrieved parties (of which I am no longer one).
“Personally, I want Linda to win and win big. Her story is a huge inspiration to many, and should continue to be, as long as she does things the right way.”

Source: Premium Times

Linda Ikeji’s Copyright Debacle By Seyi Taylor

 
Nigeria’s most successful blogger, Linda Ikeji, is under fire.
She’s severally been accused of plagiarism which is defined as “the practice of taking someone else’s work or ideas and passing them off as one’s own“. In fact, Linda seems to be mostly guilty of taking content from another source without permission or attribution. Most recently, a certain @MrAyeDee accused her of using tweets and images he posted and using them on her blog without permission or attribution.
Linda’s success is phenomenal. After 8 years of blogging, she has become a poster child for digital success – a self-made woman who rose from rags to riches with the aid of determination and the internet. She recently caused a minor uproar when she celebrated her birthday by posting pictures of her brand new Range Rover . Linda is a bit of a wunderkind in the Nigerian context – a single woman who achieved success without any obvious patronage from the establishment.
Yet, questions continue to trail her operations – one of the most critical being allegations of plagiarism from local and international sites. As we said earlier, the source in question in this case is an individual who tweets under the handle @MrAyeDee about security affairs in Nigeria, especially on the insurgency raging in the North-East of the country.
He told TechCabal that he noticed tweets and pictures being used on Linda Ikeji’s blog from around the end of September. Once he noticed this, he attempted to contact Linda through the email address on her site before using Twitter to reach out to her. He claims that the blog has used his content in between 7-8 stories, but only made DMCA Takedown requests for 3. They have since been taken down. He claims that has not been able to make any direct contact with Linda.
As the controversy raged on Twitter, Uduak Oduok, a US-based lawyer who frequently comments on entertainment issues, revealed that the owner of the domain on @MrAyeDee’s Twitter profile – 15past8.com – also owns LindaIkeji.net, suggesting that the two had a history and that perhaps, Alexander was guilty of domain squatting and perhaps to trying to extort Ms Ikeji.
Our investigation revealed that indeed, the domains were owned by the same person – Emmanuel Efremov. Alexander confirmed that his company – 15 Past 8 Media – had acquired the LindaIkeji.net domain name, but he was not privy to the details of his company’s domain operations. He however insisted that they acquired the domain for Linda and have made no money from it since registration. Our search confirmed that the domain has redirected to Linda’s blog practically since registration.
We have reached out to Linda Ikeji for comment but have yet to reach her.  We will update this story as soon as we get a response.

Is Using Tweets in a Story Plagiarism?

One of the questions that has bugged me the most is whether it’s illegal to utilize another person’s tweets in a story.  I’m not sure the answer to that question is “yes”.  Here’s Forbes and Mashable using tweets and pictures from a user’s Twitter account to explain a story about the Osama Bin Laden raid.  Some have argued that the proper way to use tweets is to use the embed function (that’s what we use on TechCabal) but even Forbes sometimes uses screenshots.

What Next for Linda?

So where does that leave one of Nigeria’s biggest content businesses? Linda Ikeji has obviously been a victim of her success. She has built a remarkable audience and generated lots of value as a result, proving that digital content is a viable business. As a result, she’s got the attention of the public – scrutiny was inevitable.
Linda’s business model is predicated on ridiculously low overheads – she keeps a lean staff and ensures that her content acquisition costs are low.  It is inconceivable that these attacks will reduce – and Linda might have to invest in building her content creation team, thereby thinning her margins in the long run.  She might also have to invest in acquiring her domains – which are owned by a bunch of people from Jonathan Santos (LindaIkeji.com), Tosin Odunfa (LindaIkeji.ng), Twinpine Advertising (LindaIkeji.mobi) and 15 Past 8 Media (LindaIkeji.net).  Hosting a site that some estimate delivers 500,000 page views a day will also not be cheap.
But Linda is not a stupid person by any stretch of the imagination.  She’s navigated the digital media landscape rather astutely, and private conversations have shown that, as long as she hasn’t lost her edge, she should be able to leverage this crisis to take her business to the next level.
We await.

source; techcabal