vicemag:

PIPA Supporters Violate Copyright Too

Last week, I wrote something about the hypocritical copyright violations on SOPA author Lamar Smith’s very own website. You might have seen it when it was featured on the Forbes, Time or Huffington Post websites, or, most likely, when Tyler, the Creator tweeted about it just now.

I asked you guys to send me any other copyright violations you could find by supporters of Lamar’s “Stop Online Piracy Act.” To be honest, we thought the outcry surrounding the proposals had died down—there was talk that SOPA had been shelved, and Lamar’s office hasn’t been taking our calls—but earlier today, Lamarresurfaced to let us know that he still intends to use his bill to criminalize us all for posting the lyrics to “The Thong Song” on each other’s Facebook pages.

But if SOPA does ultimately flop, as all sane people expect it to, the slightly-less-bad PIPA bill is still waiting in the wings to gallop in and throttle all the fun out of the internet. So I’m moving the search over to PIPA supporters. (A full list of which can be viewed here.)

Thanks to everyone who sent me stuff. Sorry if you haven’t heard back from me, I got A LOT of emails relating to this. Below are the copyright violations carried out by PIPA supporters that I was able to prove. There’s many many many more (from almost every single PIPA co-sponsor’s site, in fact), but without actually getting written confirmation from the copyright owners in question, I’m unable to post anything here.

A lot of people have also been getting in touch to point out to me that these people are not violating SOPA/PIPA. Which is true. My point is more that, if these people aren’t able to abide by EXISTING copyright laws, they clearly lack the understanding to create stricter ones and, ideally, should just GTFO.

ROY BLUNT

This is a screencap of PIPA co-sponsor Roy Blunt’s Twitter page from a couple of days ago.

The background image is by photographer Walter Rowland. I spoke to his wife Linny, and she told me:

“Wow, I’m so surprised to see that someone would do this. Especially a senator! It’s even more of a violation because I’m actually in the photo so it’s as if I’m supporting his beliefs. Yes, that’s one of my husband’s photos who is actually a semi-professional photographer, and no, they weren’t given permission.”

Roy has since changed the background on his Twitter in an attempt to cover his tracks.

CLAIRE McCASKILL

This is PIPA supporter and Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill’s Twitter page as it appears right now.

And this is the background image she stole from Flickr user J. Stephen Conn, who told me this:

“I do not recall giving the senator permission to use this photo on her Twitter account. I have put the photo in the Creative Commons, which means anyone may use it for non-commercial purposes, however, proper attribution of the photo should be given because it is NOT in the public domain.”

DENNIS ROSS

The above screencap shows the homepage of Florida congressman/PIPA co-sponsor Dennis Ross’ website.

Which features the appropriately titled illustration (above) “Overweight Government Pig” by cartoonist John S. Pritchett. You’ll notice that Dennis cropped out the part where it says “© John Pritchett”. We contacted John, and he told us:

“To my knowledge, I did not license the usage of my “Overweight Govt. Pig” illustration to Dennis Ross.”

Wuh oh!

SHERROD BROWN

And finally, we have Ohio senator and PIPA co-sponsor Sherrod Brown. Who, as you can see from the above screencap, is using an image lifted from Google Maps on his offical senate site.

According to the Google Maps content rules and guidelines page, you are only allowed to use content from Google Maps if you credit Google, and “Make attribution readable to the average reader or viewer.” At the time of writing, Sherrod’s site does not credit Google Maps.

It truly saddens me to see this group of people using creative content that they did not create to further their own political agendas. Here’s to hoping PIPA passes to offer the world some protection from these wicked, wicked people.

Follow Jamie on Twitter - @JLCT

vicemag:

The Author of SOPA Is a Copyright Violator

US Congressman and poor-toupee-color-chooser Lamar Smith is the guy who authored the Stop Online Piracy Act. SOPA, as I’m sure you know, is the shady bill that will introduce way harsher penalties for companies and individuals caught violating copyright laws online (including making the unauthorized streaming of copyrighted content a crime which you could actually go to jail for). If the bill passes, it will destroy the internet and, ultimately, turn the world into Mad Max (for more info, go here).

I decided to check that everything on Lamar’s official campaign website was copyright-cleared and on the level. Lamar is using several stock images on his site, two of which I tracked back to the same photographic agency. I contacted the agency to make sure he was paying to use them, but was told that it’s very difficult for them to actually check to see if someone has permission to use their images. (Great news, copyright violators!) However, seeing as they’re both from the same agency and are unwatermarked, it seems fairly likely that he is the only person on the entire internet who is actually paying to use a stock image (and he’d be an idiot not to).

So I took a look back at an archived, pre-SOPA version of his site.

Above is a screenshot of his site as it appeared on the 24th of July, 2011.

And this is the background image Lamar was using. I managed to track that picture back to DJ Schulte, the photographer who took it.

And whaddya know? Looks like someone forgot to credit him.

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. So according to the SOPA bill, should it pass, maybe I could petition the court to take action against www.texansforlamarsmith.com.”

Oh dear. Luckily for DJ, there are people out there like Lamar making new laws to protect the little guy against online copyright theft. Keep fighting that good fight, Lamar!

We’ve contacted the office of Lamar Smith and are waiting on a response.

Follow Jamie on Twitter: @JLCT

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