On March 28, 2023, we published a report titled ‘Bloomberg predicts Sheikh Hasina winning a straight fourth term’. As this news drew attention of thousands of our readers, an online publication named ‘Bangla Insider’ in Bangladesh shamelessly copied the content from Blitz and published it using our title and the entire content without giving any credit to our newspaper, which is considered as a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) of 1998. Subsequently we have pressed complaint with Google on this matter, as Google is a company registered in the United States and it is obliged to follow the rules set by DMCA.
Under DMCA, web users cannot legally upload content that does not belong to them. Materials such as news items, articles, photos, videos, and music cannot also be used or shared online without the content owner’s permission.
Anyone who violates DMCA policy can be forced to take down or delete copyrighted material from their site.
Because the DMCA is a US law, it is only enforceable within the US. If the hosting website is based in the US, it is subject to DMCA regulations, regardless of whether the site owner or copyright owner are physically present in the country. Under such circumstance, as the hosting company of Bangla Insider is based in the United States, they also need to take appropriate measures in this regard.
It may be mentioned here that, Bangla Insider copied and re-published our original content at 10:00 AM, 29 Mar, 2023 – more than 24 hours of publication of the content in Blitz.
