Hello! investigates the hacking of Tamara Falcó’s wedding and will “claim” WhatsApp for the dissemination of its exclusive

There are very few precedents that can be compared to the expectation that the wedding of Tamara Falcó and Íñigo Onieva has generated in the world of the heart. The link was held, after many obstacles, setbacks and a break included, last Saturday under strict security measures to protect a succulent exclusive that the couple had closed with the magazine Hola, the header that has been portraying the social chronicle in Spain since its foundation in 1944.

Tamara and Íñigo ordered the mobile phones to be removed from the 400 guests who attended a ceremony held in El Rincón (Aldea del Fresno, Madrid), a small palace owned by the bride and her brother Manuel. The objective was that no image was filtered before the publication reached the points of sale this Monday in advance, since the regular numbers come out on Wednesdays. They succeeded and Hola finally landed on newsstands 36 hours after the link with a number that dedicated 50 pages to the event of the year. It sold out in a few hours, but it actually reached far more people than had paid to get one of its most coveted copies in recent memory.

The Hola special with Tamara and Íñigo posing as newlyweds on the cover was leaked through WhatsApp through a ‘PDF’ document that was jumping from group to group at high speed, thus becoming the viral (and illegal) phenomenon of the day under a “resent many times” that gave an idea of ​​the true dimension that the matter was taking. The truth is that it was not difficult to find users who had received the expected graphic report on their mobile phones in an action that could be described as the largest press ‘hacking’ operation, with the particularity that it affected a magazine that has paid, According to what has been published, close to half a million euros for the exclusive of the wedding that has grabbed the most headlines in recent months.

Hola has begun to investigate this leak that has seriously damaged the editorial commitment that it had made for its own content. “We have begun to put the machinery in motion to prevent this from continuing to reproduce, because it is a domino effect,” explains Rafael Juristo, lawyer for the magazine and partner at Contiac, to elEconomista. “We are going to make the pertinent claim before Meta [dueña de WhatsApp] through the channels they have established and, if that is insufficient, we will study other actions against the owner of a tool that is being used for illegal actions,” he says, although he is aware that it is a difficult confrontation. “This is a David against Goliath , but we have no qualms about defending the right to information and business freedom, against Meta or whatever Goliath it may be,” he says.

an illegal practice

To avoid future ‘hacking’, Hola calls on these companies to “take a preventive attitude” and deploy “technological means available to content creators so that this does not happen again.” On the other hand, he appeals to the readers. “Sometimes they are not aware that by the mere fact of receiving and forwarding a PDF they are committing an illegal act,” says Rafael Juristo. “The hacking of magazines and newspapers cannot be normalized,” he settles.

The case of Hola has aroused the support of the editors. The Information Media Association (AMI) has shown its “solidarity” with the magazine and recalls that “piracy is a crime against intellectual property that carries prison terms of between six months and four years, in addition to economic fines” . “Piracy of editorial content,” he adds, “harms intellectual property and affects the sustainability of the publishing industry.” Likewise, he warns that “it endangers the work of journalists.” AMI also demands that Meta “responsibly behave in such a way that it immediately stops the illegitimate distribution of editorial content and puts in place the necessary means to prevent these behaviors from recurring in the future.” The association of ARI magazines pronounces itself in the same vein. It demands Meta to “take responsibility for the illegal practices that take place on WhatsApp” and asks to “end mass mailings” because they have “the same effect as theft.” “The situation experienced this week by Hola, which is repeated every day with newspapers, magazines and editorial news, reveals the seriousness and magnitude of the problem for the country’s leading cultural industry.”