HavaSosyalMedya’s Exclusive Content Used Without Permission by Times of Malta

HavaSosyalMedya’s Exclusive Content Used Without Permission by Times of Malta: Legal Action to Follow

At HavaSosyalMedya, we pride ourselves on delivering exclusive news content while adhering to ethical journalism standards. Unfortunately, we recently discovered that Times of Malta uploaded our exclusive video to their platform without permission or providing proper attribution through embedding. This action disregards both ethical journalism principles and international copyright laws.

What Happened?

A video we exclusively shared on our platform was downloaded and reuploaded by Times of Malta without seeking prior permission. Instead of embedding the content directly from our platform, they uploaded it to their own servers. As the rightful copyright owner, we have made it clear that such unauthorized use is both unethical and a clear violation of copyright law.

Our Response and Legal Position

We contacted Times of Malta and clarified the following:

• Downloading and reuploading copyrighted content without explicit permission constitutes copyright infringement, regardless of whether credit is given after the fact.

• Ethical and legal use of our content would have required either prior authorization or embedding the content directly from our platform.

• The argument that the video is in the “public domain” due to its factual nature does not exempt it from copyright protection. Under the Berne Convention, which both Malta and Turkiye/Turkey are signatories to, even factual reporting must respect copyright laws unless proper permissions are obtained.

• Our video was not a widely circulated viral clip; it was an exclusive piece of content created and published solely by HavaSosyalMedya.

Despite our efforts to address this issue amicably, Times of Malta has refused to acknowledge the infringement, claiming that crediting our platform post-publication was sufficient.

Next Steps

We take this matter very seriously and are committed to protecting our intellectual property rights. To address this issue:

• We will publicly highlight how Times of Malta violated our copyright and failed to adhere to ethical journalism practices.

• We will notify media organizations in Malta and Turkiye about this unauthorized use of our content.

• We will pursue legal action.

Unauthorized use of copyrighted content cannot be justified under any circumstances. As HavaSosyalMedya, we remain steadfast in our mission to uphold ethical journalism and protect the rights of content creators.

— HavaSosyalMedya Team