Mukhtar Dan’Iyan Opens Up On Linda Ikeji's Blog Shutdown
A lot of Nigerians, especially gossip and entertainment lovers where taken by surprise when the removal of popular news and entertainment site, Linda Ikeji blog, was made known by Google over plagiarism accusation.
Premium Times in an exclusive interview on Thursday with the man behind the development, Mukhtar Dan’Iyan, who is an Editor-in-Chief of US-based The 15 Past Eight Media Group, speaks on why he the action was taken against the popular blogger.
According to Dan’Iyan, who is instrumental to the shutdown of the site, Ms. Ikeji ignored his repeated complaints over copyright infringement and plagiarism. He revealed that the drama started after Ms. Ikeji used his tweets about the happenings in the war against the dreaded terrorist group, Boko Haram without his approval.
“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. 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 said.
He further disclosed that Ms. Ikeji had used over 10,000 copyrighted pictures and stories over the past five years without the permission of the copyright owners. He said Google took down the blog on Wednesday in reaction to the several allegations of copyright infringement against her.
However, Ms. Ikeji, who declined to respond to enquiries on Wednesday, had earlier on Tuesday refuted plagiarism allegations and went ahead to accuse Mr. Dan’Iyan of using another name, Emmanuel Efremov, to stalk her, as well as register almost ten of her domain names.
Mr. Dan’Iyan, who did not deny knowledge of the name Efremov, revealed that the bearer is one of the directors in his company.
“15Past8.com has owners like any other company. He’s one of them. 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,” he said.
Meanwhile, Mr. Dan’Iyan’s accusations and subsequent threats of organising a class action against Ms. Ikeji, has generated a lot of condemnation from huge readers who alleged that Dan’Iyan was only being envious and consumed with hate.
Mr. Dan’Iyan, however, revealed that he has backed out from the class action against Ms. Ikeji, whose blog ranks No. 10 on the Alexa rankings of Top 500 sites in Nigeria though Google has continued to gather momentums on the matter.
“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. 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,” Mr. Dan’Iyan said.
A Digital Copyright Millenium Act, DMCA, is an avenue to report content that you would like removed from Google’s services under applicable laws.
All efforts to contact Google on Wednesday for a response on the matter proved abortive.
It would be recalled that the website of the most popular Nigerian blogger Linda Ikeji was taken down on October 8 by tech firm, Google, allegedly in connection with the dispute about the blog’s content originality.
Source: Legit.ng
