Everything About the Hari Raya Decor That’s Used Without Permission by PA

Imagine you’re minding your own business when you suddenly realised that one of your wedding images is being displayed in full scale on a stage.

The thing is, you’ve been married for several years, and the stage isn’t about your wedding but about Hari Raya.

Even the cats in Yishun know the difference between a wedding and Hari Raya—one is a public holiday and one isn’t.

Well, this seems even more unlikely when the stage is linked to a Member of Parliament.

But this happened to Ms Sarah Bagharib, and boy was she triggered.

Everything About the Hari Raya Décor That’s Used Without Permission by PA

Ms Sarah and her husband married in 2017, and just like any couple, they had taken wedding photos of them in traditional Malay garb.

Two days ago, two of her friends alerted her of this standee that looks exactly like one of her wedding images, except that the faces have been cut out so that people can take images of them in the Malay garb.

What’s worse is that the couple nor the photographer has been approached to give consent for the use of the image.

Other than blatant copyright infringement, Ms Sarah also took issue with how the image is used; to put things into context, it’s like people celebrating Chinese New Year in wedding dresses, or people celebrating Christmas in wedding gowns.

She posted the incident on her Instagram, and also contacted the relevant people who could’ve been involved in this.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by sarah bagharib (@sarahbagharib)

And the organization that puts up the decorations has responded.

People’s Association: Vendor Had Indeed Use Image Without Permission

Before anything, here’s something you probably didn’t know of: you can buy high-quality and high-resolution images online for less than $30 online.

If you’re a company that requires lots of stock images, you can even subscribe to monthly plans and you can get images for less than $1 per image.

In other words, you won’t need to engage a $1,000 per day photographer to get a royalty-free image for use.

But hey: someone appears to cut corner here.

The organisation in charge of the decoration turned out to be People’s Association.

They’ve since responded, saying that they had outsourced the project to a vendor, Warabi Enterprise (Art Studio).

The vendor had indeed downloaded the image of Ms Sarah online to use it, which, according to PA, is “against the policies which have been put in place.”

They, together with Radin Mas CO (the PA there), take responsibly for it as they have “have oversight of the matter, the decorations were allowed to be put up.”

Here’s their post in full:

In addition, the Member of Parliament in the area (with his big face on the background) has also apologised to Ms Sarah.

Featured Image: Instagram (@sarahbagharib)