Brian Brown, the president of NOM, the National Organization For Marriage, has finally responded to his organization’s theft of three photos by falsely claiming the issue was over one photo that was in the public domain. Mr. Brown should check his dictionary and expand his knowledge base. Unsurprisingly, Brown also claims “[MSNBC anchor Rachel] Maddow and her friends at the Human Rights Campaign” chose last Tuesday to run the story exposing NOM’s theft is because a New Hampshire committee voted to repeal that state’s same-sex marriage law.
Last week, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) issued a press release urging NOM, the National Organization For Marriage, to “Fess Up About Stolen Photo.”
Readers will remember that last week blogger Jeremy Hooper discovered that NOM had stolen three images, one taken by Reuters photographer Jim Young at a Barack Obama for President campaign rally in St. Louis, and two, posted to the photography site Flickr under specific Creative Commons licenses requiring attribution and only usable for noncommercial works.
Of the two Flickr photos, one was from the Barack Obama for President campaign of another campaign rally in 2008, the other from a Progressive activist at a NOM rally. The two Flickr photos were digitally combined to make a speech given by National Organization For Marriage president Brian Brown appear to be attended by tens if not hundreds of thousands. The most-recently discovered swiped photo is the one at right, depicting NOM president Brian Brown.
Yet Brian Brown, in typical NOM fashion, ignored the theft of two of the photos, and lies, saying the third was “a common use photo in the public domain.”
Rachel Maddow and her friends on the left are all atwitter about a photo collage created for the www.NHforMarriage.com website that NOM is sponsoring with allies in New Hampshire who are working with us to repeal same-sex marriage there.
…
It’s no accident that Maddow and her allies in the gay activist community chose Tuesday to issue their breathless “expose” about NOM’s photo “controversy”—on Tuesday the New Hampshire House Judiciary Committee voted overwhelmingly to repeal same-sex marriage! Neither Maddow nor her friends at the Human Rights Campaign can defend imposing same-sex marriage on New Hampshire with no vote of the people. So they issue “reports” and press releases criticizing NOM over a photo collage! They object to us using a photo of a crowd scene, which symbolizes the tens of thousands of New Hampshire voters who are part of our effort. They’re upset that the photo was not taken at a NOM rally. Seriously?! NOM using a common use photo in the public domain is considered a great scandal, yet they can redefine marriage—the most important social institution of society against the wishes of New Hampshire voters—and nobody is supposed to object? It’s as if the institution of marriage gets mugged, and they complain about speeding in the neighborhood when someone rushes it to the hospital!
Let’s teach Rachel Maddow and her pals at the HRC what’s really important in this debate in New Hampshire. We’ve swapped out photos on the www.NHforMarriage.com site to avoid the distraction, now it’s time to focus on the real controversy.
Join with us to restore the law to what it was before Tim Gill and John Lynch hijacked it following hundreds of thousands in campaign contributions.
Call your legislators and ask them to support HB437 to restore marriage as the union of one man and one woman and reinstate civil unions for gay couples. And please make a contribution of $43.70 to help us win this battle. This is going to be a tough fight. Maddow and her uber-liberal allies can be expected to try every dirty trick in the book to defeat us because they know that if we are successful, it will be a tremendous setback for them. But by supporting HB 437 and making a contribution of $43.70 (or whatever you can afford), you’ll be showing the left that we are going to win!
Hooper, who discovered the theft, today writes,
Seriously?! NOM (the words are attributed to president Brian Brown) is really acting like it’s some sort of standard practice for an organization to take the historically sized crowds of one of their biggest political foes and Photoshop said crowd into the organization’s own collage, as a sort of de facto symbol for their own support base?! That’s fair and common use in NOM world?!
Can’t this organization take responsibility for ANYTHING?!?!
And adds,
I’m not surprised that NOM failed to credit me or this site for discovering their egregious photo manipulation, since I have in my possession an intra-NOM email that instructs staffers to never respond to me.
Let’s be very clear here.
A photograph taken by a Reuters photographer and published and copyrighted by Reuters is not ”a common use photo in the public domain.”
Photos posted to Flickr with a Creative Commons license requiring attribution — which NOM neglected to do — are not “common use photo[s] in the public domain.”
But what’s just as bad as Brian Brown lying about the photo theft is his sloughing it off as no big deal.
The National Organization For Marriage is well-known for misappropriating the work of others, and that inappropriate use of copyrighted materials has been well-documented several times. Additionally, there is NOM’s penchant for republishing scanned copies of web content, like they did here, and here, and here, in clear violation of copyright norms.
When will the lies and the thieving from NOM, the National Organization For Marriage, stop?
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