Lamar Smith Caught Infringing On Photographer's Copyright
from the but,-of-course dept
Any time you have someone who is vehemently copyright maximalist, it's really only a matter of time until someone discovers that they, too, violate copyrights. There had been some questions asked a few months ago about whether or not SOPA sponsor Lamar Smith had licenses to put up videos of news reports on his site, but that didn't seem like a huge deal (and was likely fair use anyway). However, the latest, as a ton of you are sending in, is that some enterprising folks at Vice discovered that Lamar Smith's campaign site was making use of a photograph in violation of its Creative Commons license. It seems this was what Lamar Smith's campaign website recently looked like:
And whaddya know? Looks like someone forgot to credit him.Ooops. And this is a big part of the problem that we're talking about. Thanks to the ridiculousness of today's copyright laws, it's pretty much guaranteed that everyone infringes, whether you intend to or not. Which is why we ought to be exceptionally careful about doling out quick and powerful punishment for those involved in infringement. After all, the supporters of these things never know when it might just come back to bite them directly...
I contacted DJ, to find out if Lamar had asked permission to use the image and he told me that he had no record of Lamar, or anyone from his organization, requesting permission to use it: "I switched my images from traditional copyright protection to be protected under the Creative Commons license a few years ago, which simply states that they can use my images as long as they attribute the image to me and do not use it for commercial purposes.
"I do not see anywhere on the screen capture that you have provided that the image was attributed to the source (me). So my conclusion would be that Lamar Smith's organization did improperly use my image.
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Filed Under: copyright, dj schulte, infringement, lamar smith, photograph, pipa, protect ip, sopa
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Sue him...sue him I say...
Make him spend time and money defending himself in court rather than trying to get reelected.
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Re: Sue him...sue him I say...
At least he didn't travel twelve hours with his dog in a crate on the roof.
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Re: Sue him...sue him I say...
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In Hopes of Moving Things Along
- logical leaps of faith to guilt by criticism
- darryl
- responses to darryl
- TAM
- darryl
- more darryl
- poor judgement with the insightful button
- this list
Some good/relevant/useful arguments/thoughts:- people support sharing
- how common accidental infringement is
- the Germans are beating the Americans at this
- how current legislation issues are relevant
- rediculous, yet notable, extremes of the situation
- probably anything from the top 10's of last year
Hopefully this'll move us past the near obligatory grumbling, fishing stories, and mud slinging and open up the debate a little./misguided-distractions
I'd be interested in knowing exactly how sympathetic DJ Schulte is to a hypothetical request by Lamar Smith for permission to continue using the picture. I realize its more or less of moot consequence as Smith's web lackey has likely changed it by now, but it would be a nice contrast for displaying the snense of entitlement that seems to be roughly proportional to the quantity of intellectual properties with an expected positive monetary return on investment.
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Re: In Hopes of Moving Things Along
Under SOPA, there would be NO allowance for such a request!
You break the law...your site is OURS, boy!
I love it when hypocrites are hoisted on their own petards!
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In other words, they don't give a rat's ass about some photographer. But they do care if Disney's profits are deemed insufficient.
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I expect to see the infamous ICE/DOJ banner informing that Lamar's website was closed because it was engaged in child porn distribution.
"But, Ninja, it's copyright infringement!"
Oh... No problem, ICE will fix it in 48h like the 84k sites seized by mistake. No damage done to his image, right?
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Care to elaborate, rather than just "But if you think about it, really, isn't it ok? Shouldn't we all just vote for Lamar?"
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Even the so called pirates don't stoop that low...
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Especially when you stop and think about the cost of attorneys, and the aggravation of civil discovery, and the years of your life wasted in court.
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Especially when you stop and think about the cost of attorneys, and the aggravation of civil discovery, and the years of your life wasted in court.
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and the funny thing is, I have a few times seen the creators show up on those trackers(like the noid) and thank people for their support and say the same thing the post did "if you like my work please support me/it so I can continue to do XXX" (thats a rough example)
I am of the strong belief that piracy dosnt hurt the sales of quality products, only the sales of poor products(like your average UBI soft console port...)
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What do they have to be worried about.
Copyright Maximalist - High Court - get a warning
Everyone Else - Low court - get $100000 fine and jail for felony infringement of a business model
http://torrentfreak.com/return-of-the-high-court-and-low-court-111002/
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mike, gez man, even you know better!
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Re: accred.
FTFY
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Powerful senator versus some nobody.
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Either way, I'm laughing.
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Well they are quick to act...well someone is anyway. Either Smith's designer is scrambling to scrub the site for any images that are not properly licensed OR perhaps, though less likely, a DDoS?
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http://www.saabj.org/
and on a red roof inn site for San Antonio, haven't been able to figure out yet if anyone holds the copyright.
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Re: Re:
http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-photo-8771971-san-antonio-texas-city-aerial-tower-o f-the-america-s.php?st=25b0572
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Otherwise, please marc sarc.
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Won't hold water
If I were to guess his web designer simply didn't understand what Creative Commons means or maybe s/he didn't care. It's going to be easy for Smith to brush this off as a mistake and either give Mr. Schulte proper attribution or simply get another piece of photography that is properly licensed.
On the other hand, if he's going to play the part of copyright avenger, he better make sure he's 100% complaint with the laws/bills he supports.
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a*hole trying to hide the dirt now. robots.txt archive block just went live
http://www.texansforlamarsmith.com/robots.txt
# See http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/norobots.html for documentation on how to use the robots.txt file
#
# To ban all spiders from the entire site uncomment the next two lines:
# User-Agent: *
# Disallow: /
User-agent: ia_archiver
Disallow: /
f.y.i. the ia_archiver is the user agent used by the web archive project. This means they ONLY block the archive for showing past website contents
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Re: a*hole trying to hide the dirt now. robots.txt archive block just went live
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Re: Re: a*hole trying to hide the dirt now. robots.txt archive block just went live
I don't know what they did specifically, but they appear to have had it removed.
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Re: Re: Re: a*hole trying to hide the dirt now. robots.txt archive block just went live
See the comment in the FAQ
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Re: Re: Re: Re: a*hole trying to hide the dirt now. robots.txt archive block just went live
It's like a magazine deciding take the old copy you have and say you can't look at it any longer :(
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: a*hole trying to hide the dirt now. robots.txt archive block just went live
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Re: Re: Re: a*hole trying to hide the dirt now. robots.txt archive block just went live
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayback_Machine#Netbula_LLC_v._Chordiant_Software_Inc.
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Be Careful of What You Ask For
As these laws have been aggrandized, the ability to interpret and apply the law has become increasingly absurd.
Once a law becomes sufficiently convoluted it looses its meaning. Society as a whole then suffers because we no longer have the rule of law that applies equally to everyone. Instead we have a whimsical legal system based on "extenuating circumstance" and "novel" interpretations. Only those who can afford a loquacious lawyer who can spin some fantastic psychedelic explanation will have ersatz justice.
Seems that we could refer to our new legal system as being an outgrowth of the Twinky Defense.
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Re: Be Careful of What You Ask For
I don't know about that. It seems more often than not that those wealthy and powerful enough to make laws are wealthy and powerful enough to not be prosecuted for breaking them.
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Re: Re: Be Careful of What You Ask For
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Re: Re: Be Careful of What You Ask For
> than not that those wealthy and powerful
> enough to make laws are wealthy and powerful
> enough to not be prosecuted for breaking them.
When it comes to members of Congress, they usually put a clause into just about every bill exempting themselves and their staff from its application.
I wouldn't be surprised at all if the final versions of SOPA/PIPA have similar clauses that will exempt Congressional web sites from having to abide by or be penalized under the new law.
The problem for Lamar in this case is that his law hasn't passed yet, so he has no exemption to fall back on.
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The only one(s) that are legal.
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If that's to much work for you type fair-use in google.
What would be the point in me giving you the info?
I didn't write the laws, but the information is FREE and available.
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I believe DJ was using this one based on his comment in the article:
"This license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. This is the most accommodating of licenses offered. Recommended for maximum dissemination and use of licensed materials."
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/
It is not fair use to take another persons work and use it as your background picture w/o crediting them.
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Quit whining.
It is too fair when the power-differential is high enough: When you're a high-status politician, you can get away with stepping on little people.
If you're a large public corporation, with in-house attorneys and outside counsel, then you can beat up on folks all day long.
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Oh, and the US government should also go after Lamar's supporters for circumventing the blocks on his website, especially if they lend Lamar Smith financial aid through campaign contributions! That's even worse then piracy, that's paying the pirates for someone else's content!
Sure it'll be inconvenient for Lamar when it comes to running for reelection, and for his supporters. But come on, this is alleged piracy we're dealing with, that's almost as bad as murder! Which makes it perfectly ok to punish Lamar Smith and supporters first and figure out if they're guilty or not months or even years later when a trial can finally be scheduled.
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Here to save the day
V/R
Capt ICE Enforcer.
These things I do, So you won't be able to.
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Re: Here to save the day
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Re: Here to save the day
Don't forget the IN YOUR FACE banner.
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Can we shut down his funding?
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Eh
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Re: Eh
lol
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Re: Eh
For the sake of argument, let's say that some foreign website does have that exact image available for illegal download and someone uses SOPA to go after them. With Smith having it on his site also, wouldn't that go against the anti-circumvention provisions which are not limited only to foreign sites?
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Re: Re: Eh
After further reading, I don't think that would qualify under the anti-circumvention provisions. So please disregard my above comment.
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Re: Eh
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1) It belittles your argument that the action should be allowed. Afterall, you just accused him of some infringing therefor you acknowledge that the practice is wrong.
2) It makes you look childish. "He started it!"
Stop trying to lead some activist revolution against supporters of SOPA/PIPA, and instead focus on facts. Until you do so you are just spreading propaganda and it makes you look like a school yard bully. And I don't want to here any arguments about the other side starting the bullying see item 2 above.
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Under SOPA DJ would have had the right to get his Lamar's site shut down. That is funny and worth pointing out. It shows how clueless these people are in demanding that every follow strict rules that they can't even abide by themselves.
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Yes, sad to say, SOPA supporters ARE desperate, boy.
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Never fall for your own propaganda: Just because you and the MPAA and RIAA call each and every one of us a pirate....
Let me put it this way, I've just quit caring whether you call me a pirate or a piracy-apologist or a piracy-supporter or whatever the word du jour is.
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1) Weakens you argument
2) Makes you look childish.
Was that so hard to understand?
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Are you the same loser who thinks that organizing a consumer boycott is 'censorship'?
Are you well paid for your supplicancy or do you do it for free?
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Fact: Lamar is a hypocritical douchebag.
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$1,000,000 page hits X $150,000 per page hit = $150 billion dollars?
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Response to: anonymous on Jan 12th, 2012 @ 1:06pm
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http://www.texansforlamarsmith.com/
looks like a pretty fast/ rough job though.
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http://www.home2riverwalk.com/san-antonio-hotel.aspx
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http://www.home2riverwalk.com/san-antonio-hotel.aspx
No, it's that image...
http://www.home2riverwalk.com/resourcefiles/mainimages/downtown-san-antonio-hotel-location-top.jpg
hastly-extended in Photoshop...
http://www.texansforlamarsmith.com/heading-1.jpg
Get your facts straight! ;-)
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Interesting...
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Talk about shoddy work!
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Can't figure out who has the copyright yet.
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http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-photo-8771971-san-antonio-texas-city-aerial-tower-o f-the-america-s.php?st=25b0572
Hope he bought a license.
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He's 100% by the US Chamber of Commerce.
Makes sense.
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http://graceavenuechurch.com/our-story-1/
and the file name has "iStock" in it...
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http://www.propelmg.com/siemens-rcs/conf/
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http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-photo-10591880-austin-skyline-at-sunrise.php
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If this story is false then nothing will happen but to bring out the truth of the story only.
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Don't try to egg someone on into doing something. Lawsuits are hideously expensive, drag on forever, use up endless amounts of time, emotion, resources, and rarely result in satisfaction for anyone.
The court system in the US is pretty broken right now. Everyone should stay out of the courts�if at all possible.
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Re:
The story's already been shown to be true, son.
What part do you doubt?
The screengrabs showing the site and the infringing image?
The multiple verifications of what was on the site from unrelated sources?
The fact the site's webmaster took it down and replaced it with a pitiful replacement a community college student could do better?
The fact the site's webmaster is desperately trying to scrub site from the Wayback Machine?
Is there one I missed?
PS: I do hope someone sucked/downloaded the site before it was pulled.
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Practice what you preach
I am sure there are much artwork protected by Copyright around that would welcome his usage charge.
Naughty Lamar Smith should have credited the artist. Now that is not much to ask considering what a nice free non-commercial use background it is.
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Really? In a swiftly banged-together site with what looks like the finest tools Geocities had to offer?
http://www.texansforlamarsmith.com/contribute
I don't see an "s" at the end of that http and I'd really rather not enter a bunch of info just to see if it redirects somewhere safer with my cc info in its possession.
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The entire page doesn't need to be https only the submission of data.
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Creative commons and copyleft
Everybody knows that's not real copyright if it doesn't belong to the entertainment industry. He should be glad that someone is using his work for free!. Use without attribution is still good advertisement.
/sarc
fwiw, i know an artist whose works have been ripped off on the website for one of the tv series owned by WB. It's probably still there. I wouldn't believe for a second that protectionist laws like SOPA would give him or this photographer any authority to act against those misusing their work.
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*facepalm*
Here's a challenge, Mr Smith.
Close Google.
Turn off the phones.
Open Photoshop.
Create! Go Go!! What are you waiting for?
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Re: *facepalm*
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hmmmm
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It's true. Why, just yesterday, I used his cosmetics to highlight my cheekbones, and I broke out in a rash.
Obviously, it's counterfeit rouge, which costs the cosmetics industry billions of dollars per minute. We must break the internet to stop this outrage! Won't somebody think of the cheekbones?
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Just too much fun
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But if someone you liked had the same allegation against them, you would likely point out this is clearly fair use, and that a recent court decision just a couple weeks ago confirmed that you can in fact use a work in it's entirety under the doctrine of fair use. So... it's moot there.
But discount that entirely for a minute. Is it really that unusual for the artist of the original work to have no idea who's actually using it? Is it the least bit unusual that the artist would have no idea what websites use his work, or who licensed what? No, of course not.
Smith's website was probably created by a third tier web development outfit, like any of the small web design firms you'll find in the Midwest or elsewhere. These companies are usually pretty good about licensing. If you could find the people who designed the website, you're likely to find the licensees of the stock photography.
This is how it's done.
It's totally legal.
You should know better than to ignore this very basic reality of web development.
Techdirt is supposed to have some technical bearings.
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2. Most web developers copy and paste things from different sources and I have to see one yet that credit any source from where they took anything unless they use it unmodified, how many people do you know edit the EXIF data on their images to include copyrights and author names? there is not even a standard for those entries anywhere.
3. Copyright is so messed up that is not possible for anybody to fallow it not even with infinite financial resources, that is why any defender of strong IP will always get burned by it, in this case the copyrights where standard when the work was created and changed it along the way, there is no database that people can consult anywhere to see those changes, so if you bought something in the past and used today and the terms changed, which one is the one that applies? obviously the one at the time of licensing, but it was for life? does the guy have a hardcopy of the contracted anywhere? would have those people cared to archive those documents? how much would it cost to start archiving licensing agreements?
Oh crap that is a can of worms.
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If the issue is important to him, he better make sure that at least his own website lives up to the standards he wants to force on society.
The photography in question uses Creative Commons. I.e. it requires naming the artist and non-commercial use and nothing else. Easy enough. But it didn't happen.
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Mercy begets mercy, and malice begets malice. When you crusade to punish people for something and then do it yourself, it's only to be expected that a lot of people will want your head on a pike. If you couldn't see that coming before you even began your crusade, you really don't have the minimal level of foresight necessary to be making laws, to begin with.
On the specific Righthaven case you're referring to, I was actually skeptical of that particular verdict to begin with. I can't speak for anyone else.
"Smith's website was probably created by a third tier web development outfit, like any of the small web design firms you'll find in the Midwest or elsewhere. These companies are usually pretty good about licensing. If you could find the people who designed the website, you're likely to find the licensees of the stock photography.
This is how it's done.
It's totally legal."
That remains to be seen for the new image; it is a stock image that is licensable, and as such may potentially be licensed. The image that started this thread, however, was very definitely not. We know this because it has a permissive license with mandatory attribution. No payment is required to make use of it, but failure to attribute the image makes it unlicensed by definition, and hence copyright infringement.
Now, it is possible that this was done by a third party web page designer, and not Lamar's office. While this might venerate Lamar, it is, in reality a worse situation, because it means that it was commercial copyright infringement, rather than simply use for non-commercial purposes. In which case the only reasonable course of action for Lamar would be to call up an attorney general to start criminal copyright infringement charges against the company.
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Not since Caesar.
T
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Really? Then why did they take down the entire site and redesign it with photos from iStockPhoto? Why knock it out of the archive database?
Because he (or the company that developed his site) is guilty of copyright infringement. Also, there is virtually no way that this met any of the four factors of a fair use:
1. criticism of the work - nope.
2. commentary on the work - nope.
3. new reporting - nope.
4. teaching - nope.
5. scholarship - nope.
6. research - nope.
Allow me to be clear, I don't really care that he infringed the copyright of this guys photo (although it is under creative commons - non commercial, so he could have at least done the attribution). I care that he is trying to shutdown the internet to stop copyright infringement while simultaneous committing copyright infringement.
Even if this was "someone I liked" I'd still call them out for being a hypocritical douche bag.
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Book em, Danno
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This is pretty sad
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SOPA cares not about "humans"...only PIRATES, like Lamar Smith!
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Just sayin' ...
* "Stays in touch" yet claims there is no opposition to SOPA
* "I will work every day to defend the Constitution", which says that copyright is "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" (Article 1, Section 8, clause 8), yet supports legislation that would impede the Progress of Science and useful Arts
* "That means reigning in government control" while expanding government control over the Internet.
Perhaps he should line up his actions with his words.
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Maybe he found it on Flickr
Like this one
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Bill him!
Since we KNOW Lamar is a standup guy, he'll pay it, with an apology. Right?
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