Virginia’s 11th district Congressman Gerry Connolly (D) must have been channeling his inner Joe Biden…
In his most recent smear campaign against GOP challenger Keith Fimian, the Connolly campaign launched a petition website to fight against what they have misrepresented as Fimian’s viewpoint regarding the 17th amendment. This website was meant to propagandize voters into believing that Fimian supports repealing the 17th Amendment when he never has taken such a position.
In their haste to mudsling, they put together a shoddy video meant to label Fimian as some right-wing extremist. So shoddy in fact, that they used at least one picture without permission from the photographer, a clear violation of copyright laws.
How do I know this? Because that photographer is none other than yours truly.
Here is a picture of the YouTube video in question:
Here is the picture in an article I wrote on March 15, 2010:
Here is the picture again on an article I wrote on Bearing Drift:
Look familiar?
Instead of immediately posting a snarky denouncement (similar to what you’re reading now), I contacted Grant Herring at the Connolly campaign and respectfully requested that they remove my picture from their video.
Mr. Herring responded, “Thanks for your email. Our use of the photograph clearly falls within the fair use doctrine. See the Center for Social Media’s Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video.”
While I appreciated the cleverness of his response and how articulate he was in explaining to me why the Connolly campaign had a right to steal, I took it upon myself to research the matter even further.
In the end the only thing that was “clear” was the shadiness and lack of knowledge on “fair use” by the Connolly campaign. Furthermore, it was “clear” that YouTube did not agree with the assessment by Mr. Herring and they promptly removed the video within a few hours of my formal notification of copyright infringement:
Ladies and Gentlemen, Gerry Connolly cannot photoshop and edit his way to a second term. I understand that he didn’t put the video together, but his staffers did. When you hire people who reek of incompetence you will eventually pay the price. How someone runs their campaign is a reflection on who they are and how they serve as an elected official.
To the voters of the 11th district: There is a big election in November, and you will have to decide if you believe these types of shenanigans are acceptable.
If Connolly’s last campaign is any indication, this won’t be the last bonehead mistake and/or smear that you will see from him.
The Connolly campaign has finally noticed that their video has been removed and they just sneakily remade it with a new picture of Fimian. Ironically and laughably enough they stole that new photo from Keith Fimian’s profile on RPVNetwork.com!
I won’t hold my breath for an apology when dealing with a Congressman and a campaign so devoid of ethics. However, I can’t stress enough that if they had given me an apology and taken down the picture, none of this would have been posted.
