Pravmir’s statement regarding the illicit publication of materials from other sites

Natalya Mihailova | 28 August 2014

Dear Readers of Pravmir,

In connection with a recent accusation against our website concerning the illicit publication of materials from other sites, we would like to make the following statement:

We, indeed, have not always had the opportunity to seek permission from all the authors of articles that have appeared on our site. Pravmir is run by a very small group of people and requesting permission requires undertaking a daily correspondence that we simply do not have the means to undertake. We understand that this cannot be used to justify the illicit publication of materials. Therefore we ask forgiveness of all authors whose articles have appeared on our site without their permission. We had no intention to show disrespect to authors or to offend against copyright privileges and are willing to remove all such materials upon your initial request.

If you do not want your articles on our site, please contact us at pravmirmanager@gmail.com, and we will immediately remove the offending material from our site. We ask you not to leave comments on our Facebook and Twitter sites, where discussions are rarely able to maintain a peaceful tone. In order to avoid inciting strife, we ask that all criticism of our site be sent to our personal email address rather than making public statements involving many other people.

We would like to add that our site does not earn any money from the publication of anybody’s material. We rarely collect more than $200 in donations each month – and the work of our translators alone costs much more than that.

Commentators on social networks have also questioned whether there is any original content on our site. Yes, there is. Faithful readers will know that we regularly publish translations from the Russian-language version of our site. We have gradually assembled all our many original translations and articles written specially for Pravmir under the rubric “Pravmir originals.”

Once again, we offer our deepest apologies to anyone that we have offended by our actions. We ask your magnanimous forgiveness and your prayers that whatever harm we have caused you by publishing your articles will be turned to good, for the benefit of our readers.

In Christ,

The Editors of Pravmir.

Since you are here…

…we do have a small request. More and more people visit Orthodoxy and the World website. However, resources for editorial are scarce. In comparison to some mass media, we do not make paid subscription. It is our deepest belief that preaching Christ for money is wrong.

Having said that, Pravmir provides daily articles from an autonomous news service, weekly wall newspaper for churches, lectorium, photos, videos, hosting and servers. Editors and translators work together towards one goal: to make our four websites possible - Pravmir.ru, Neinvalid.ru, Matrony.ru and Pravmir.com. Therefore our request for help is understandable.

For example, 5 euros a month is it a lot or little? A cup of coffee? It is not that much for a family budget, but it is a significant amount for Pravmir.

If everyone reading Pravmir could donate 5 euros a month, they would contribute greatly to our ability to spread the word of Christ, Orthodoxy, life's purpose, family and society.