Apology From Malay Mail For Publishing Without Permission

April 13th, 2009 by ShaolinTiger at 2:27 PM UTC - 5,735 views

Ok so last week my article about PR and bloggers together with David’s article was published in the Malay Mail without permission.

I wrote a fairly strongly worded e-mail to the Malay Mail to question their behavior and asked what they planned to do about the copyright infringement. Surprisingly they replied quickly, politely and professionally (unlike some other Malaysian publications). An excerpt of the e-mail recieved.

My sincere apologies and thank you for bringing this matter to our attention.
No excuses — the publication of both your blog posts without prior permission is definitely not condoned and neither is it a practise of Malay Mail to use articles without necessary permission.
I have investigated the matter and yes, absolutely — no matter how taken up the reporter responsible for the article was with your writings — we should not have used them without your prior consent.
She has been severely reprimanded for the unethical use of your postings and for the lack of professionalism displayed.
We take this infringement very seriously and I am offering to publish an apology in the Cyberspot page soonest to acknowledge the pieces were used without permission

And today the apology was published.

Malay Mail Apology

I’d like to commend the Malay Mail on their professional response and their respect for intellectual property. More publications and generally more people in Malaysia need to be aware of intellectual property and how important it is.

I still see many bloggers using copyrighted pictures without permission and without credit (some quite ‘popular‘ bloggers too), they think if they can find it on Google images it’s fair game. In fact what they should do if they really want to illustrate their posts with others work is search Flickr for images licensed under Creative Commons. Then all they have to do is credit the photographer and it’s all legal and good.

Anyway it’s good to see some people taking this seriously, I hope more follow suit! Thanks to Sheila Rahman.

Tags: bloggers, blogs, copyright, copyright infringment, intellectual property, malay-mail, malaysia copyright, mmail, pr, published, published work, sheila rahman

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Posted in Serious Issues | 16 comments -

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16 Comments so far

suanie on April 13th, 2009 at 2:33 pm
Using Mozilla Firefox 3.0.8 on Windows XP

good on malay mail!
andrew on April 13th, 2009 at 2:36 pm
Using Mozilla Firefox 3.0.8 on Windows Vista

*applause*!! haha
kimberlycun on April 13th, 2009 at 2:41 pm
Using Mozilla Firefox 3.0.6 on Windows XP

kudos to MM!
Ndmervin on April 13th, 2009 at 2:55 pm
Using Mozilla Firefox 3.0.8 on Windows XP

Very professional of them to display the apology.

Perhaps, ShaolinTiger, you could organise a little workshop to educate the rest of the bloggers on the laws abiding copyrighted materials/pictures on how to use them, ethically..

Im sure not every blogger knows how to play by the lines in these sense.. would be helpful, looking at the growing no. of bloggers day by day..

Just my 2 cents, cheers
+Suresh+ on April 13th, 2009 at 2:59 pm
Using Mozilla Firefox 3.0.5 on Windows Vista

hey bro..

well written post..=)

btw nice meeting you at the music bash!!
Myhorng on April 13th, 2009 at 2:59 pm
Using Mozilla Firefox 3.0.8 on Windows XP

wow.. they apologize. great. credits to them.
ahmike on April 13th, 2009 at 3:22 pm
Using Mozilla Firefox 3.0.8 on Windows Vista

Kudos! well done Malay Mail!
Marvin Lee on April 13th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
Using Mozilla Firefox 3.0.8 on Windows XP

Finally an apology to set things right.
Congrats to winning your case!
Michael Yip on April 13th, 2009 at 4:16 pm
Using Mozilla Firefox 3.0.8 on Windows Vista

WAH! well done on Malay Mail.
calvaryzone on April 13th, 2009 at 5:27 pm
Using Mozilla Firefox 3.0.8 on Windows XP

scared kena sue mah.
but at least better that The Star in this aspect.
KY on April 13th, 2009 at 9:55 pm
Using Mozilla Firefox 3.0.8 on Windows XP

Kudos to Malay Mail
moons on April 14th, 2009 at 12:43 am
Using Mozilla Firefox 3.0 on Windows Vista

Aye it was a good judgement call on behalf of Malay Mail.

They at least have the decency to admit their mistakes.
U-En Ng on April 14th, 2009 at 9:22 am
Using Mozilla Firefox 3.0.8 on Windows Vista

With regards pictures being used without permission, Malay Mail Online intends in the near future to make available its photo archive free of charge for private use (especially, of course, for bloggers looking for local editorial pictures).

We will charge for high-res offset output pix. I think this is fair enough seeing as the only people who’d need that kind of resolution are those in the ad and design businesses. We’ll see how it works out.

This is of course contingent on our first getting our act together with the main site (which was redesigned a couple of days ago). Could take a while, but maybe the forthcoming photo site will be of some use to you guys.

Cheers,

U-En Ng
interim Editor,
Malay Mail Online.
Huai Bin on April 14th, 2009 at 2:07 pm
Using Internet Explorer 7.0 on Windows Vista

Hey, it’s awesome for Malay Mail to apologize like that. I have a newfound respect for the paper.

Pulled off a great PR thing there and averted backlash.
Lydia on April 14th, 2009 at 7:39 pm
Using Safari 525.27.1 on Mac OS X 10.5.6

Well done Malay Mail! A very professional and genuine move.
ShaolinTiger on April 19th, 2009 at 5:39 pm
Using Mozilla Firefox 3.0.8 on Windows XP

Ndmervin: Sounds interesting, but hey I’m no lawyer. I think Cheng Leong would do a better job.

U-En Ng: Thanks for your feedback. Do let the bloggers know somehow when your project is a go-ahead.

Huai Bin: Yah good to see someone do the right thing.