Billing itself “Australia’s premier printing news website”, Printgraphic news, was found last Friday to have lifted a number of stories from i-grafix and other online media including Proprint’s without permission, mostly without attribution. Those that were attributed were incorrect with clumsy spelling and other mistakes referring to website addresses making it impossible to click through to them.
The image opposite shows a screen shot of one of a number of stories republished by Printgraphic news from the i-grafix website without permission – which was falsely attributed to a non-existant website: i-graphixnews.com. Click here to see the real story as we originally published it.
Management at i-grafix were referred to abuses on the Reed website last week and upon reviewing the site, were shocked to find multiple violations of copyright of i-grafix stories. When contacted by i-grafix on Friday, Printgraphic news editor, Anna Game-Lopata, said “Oh yea, I’m sorry,” adding that she was “stressed” and suggesting that Printgraphic news and i-grafix exchange news – a peculiar suggestion for one media organisation to make to another.
Wayne Robinson, editor of i-grafix.com, dismissed Reed’s suggestion out-of-hand, notwithstanding the fact that Reed staff had already used i-grafix stories without permission to do so, let alone proposing a news exchange in advance.
“Why a website owned by the $9.3bn Anglo-Dutch Reed Elsevier organisation would need to steal stories from us is beyond me,” said Robinson. “The scale of the copying and the fact that the Printgraphic news site is unable to originate sufficient of its own content is evidence that the Reed site is operated by people with little connection to our industry.”
Last Friday, the publishers of i-grafix contacted Jamie Wade, associate publisher at Reed Business Information demanding an official apology, together with the immediate withdrawal of all content unlawfully sourced from i-grafix.com. Whilst three of the stories from the i-grafix website had been taken down from the Printgraphic news site when this report went live, others remained and no further comment, much less an apology had been received from Wade or any other representative of Reed.
Printer Magazines managing director, Anders Oqvist, expressed shock and dismay at this overt theft by a member company of the Reed organisation.
Oqvist said, “The publishers of i-grafix and other recognised print news websites invest heavily in news gathering, and so for us to see Reed copying our content rather than investing in sourcing their own is simply outrageous and unacceptable, it reflects badly on Reed’s ethics and credibility in the market and it will not be tolerated.”
The publishers of i-grafix are seeking legal advice.
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