Comedy | January 13, 2012 | 11 comments

Rep. Lamar Smith, SOPA author, is a copyright violator

source: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/01/12/1054157/-Rep-Lamar-Smith,-SOPA-author,-is-a-copyrig...

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WakeUpPeople
Well, here's an amusing story, in a typically infuriating kind of way. Jamie Lee Curtis Taete at VICE decided to do a little digging to see what "US Congressman and poor-toupee-color-chooser Lamar Smith," Texas Republican and author of the Stop Online Piracy Act, has on his own campaign website. And guess what?

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

I managed to track [the picture used as a background image on his site] 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."
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VICE hasn't received a response to the story from copyright violator Smith, yet.

If you haven't yet contacted your representative or senators about this legislation, please do. You can use this form to send an e-mail to your representative, and this one to contact your senators.
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