SA copyright protector Safact caught pirating content
The website of the Southern African Federation Against Copyright Theft (Safact) appears to have used copyrighted content without the proper permission.
According to a report on Htxt, an article on the website about an Internet uploader being arrested in Cape Town used an “accidentally photoshopped” headline image from Reuters.
An image search in Google reveals that images from Reuters and Shutterstock, among others, were used on the Safact website.
The report quoted Safact CEO Corne Guldenpfennig as saying that they had trusted their web design company, Triloqtech, to follow instructions to only use images they or Safact own the copyright to, or images in the public domain.
Copyright infringement on the Safact site did not appear to be limited to images.
Safact also lifted copyrighted content and republished it on its website without any attribution.
Safact was asked for comment on the piracy of content by the organisation, but did not respond by the time of publication.
Although Safact did not answer questions about its possible copyright infringement, the organisation did take its website down after they were asked for comment.
This is not the first time a copyright campaign group was caught infringing the copyright of others.
In 2010 the U.S. Copyright Group (USCG) was caught copying the content of a competitor’s website.
Torrentfreak also reported in 2011 that anti-piracy group BREIN used a musician’s track without permission in an anti-piracy campaign.
Safact down
More on Safact and piracy in SA
Netflix, Hulu streaming illegal in SA
Internet piracy criminal, civil penalties in South Africa
SA Internet pirate court appearance
First for SA: Internet pirate arrested in Cape Town
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