Madonna secures apology from OK! magazine
1 December 2008
Download PDF of Apology
The US edition of OK! magazine has apologised to Madonna and her family following the unauthorised publication of photographs of her wedding to Guy Ritchie. The photographs are private photographs and Madonna owns the copyright in them. The magazine has acknowledged that the publication of the photographs constituted an infringement of Madonna's rights and that they should not have been published.
The apology states: "In our Nov 3, 2008 issue, we published photographs of Madonna's wedding to Guy Ritchie including photographs of her children. It has since come to our attention that the individual who supplied the photographs to us had no right to do so, and that the photographs were not authorised for publication. The photographs are private photographs and Madonna owns the copyright in the photographs. Had we been aware of this at the time we would never have published the photographs.
We acknowledge that the publication of the photographs constituted an infringement of Madonna's rights and that they should not have been published. Upon being notified of Madonna's rights we immediately withdrew the photographs from publication and have agreed that we will not republish them. We also wish to offer our sincere apologies to Madonna and her family for any embarassment or distress caused by publication of the photographs."
Proceedings remain ongoing against Associated Newspapers Limited in respect of similar photographs of Madonna's wedding published in the Mail on Sunday on 19 October 2008 without her consent.
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