This is probably the worse ad I've ever seen from someone running for Congress. In fact, I had to do a double take and make sure this wasn't some type of joke.



While in a stake of shock over the sophomoric (if not downright idiotic) nature of the ad, I noticed this photo and said to myself "hmm..., that look familiar?"



Then it dawned upon me why the image caught my attention...because I shot the photograph.



Seeing that the budget for this ad was rather low, and most (if not all the images) in this so-called "ad" were a result of a google image search, it's no surprise that the top-notch Cappiello campaign used my photo seeing that it's the first image that comes up in google after a search for the words "Congressman Chris Murphy"





Now, as it clearly states on my site, "all original video/audio/graphical/text works is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.5 License (I guess you didn't see that disclaimer on my sites huh?

Here's what that disclaimer means...

You are free to share, to copy, distribute and transmit the work under the following conditions:

Attribution. You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).

No Derivative Works. You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work.

In layman's terms, if you're going to use an original piece from yours truly, feel free to do so BUT under the condition that you attribute my work and DON'T alter it.

In short, it's bad enough that a person running for Congress would put out such a poorly produced ad, it's another thing when a person running for Congress disregards the rights of an individual who simply request that, if his work is used in any manner, that it be attributed to the owner (that would be me). We can go two ways with this. Either re-work the "ad" with an attribution to my site under the photograph, remove my photo from your ad all together (which at this point, seems to be the better choice).

You think with all those fundraisers, Cappiello could purchase photographs for his ad. I guess Dave and Mark have something in common after all.

UPDATE: Genghis over at CTLP picks up on the story and nails it.

“Creative Commons” doesn’t mean “feel free to steal this work,” it’s more an attempt to make copyright more humane and intelligible while allowing artists to spread their work and get credit for it, among other things. The Cappiello campaign shouldn’t have done it. They really shouldn’t have picked one of CTBlogger’s photos to do it with.

Look, this is simple. Bloggers like myself and others don't get paid for what we do. I'm not being bankrolled by from 527 or political party. The original photos and videos you see here are done by yours truly and I don't ask for a dime in return (although, I could and probably make a good size a change). All I (and most bloggers I know) request is that your ATTRIBUTE our work...that's it.

I've work with several media outlets around the country as well as local papers such as the Tribuna (this site was even cross link in it's entirety by the News-Times back in 2006) and they knew the drill. A political campaign which is focused on a federal office (which has to follow strict campaign rules) should DEFINITELY know the drill.

UPDATE 2: It looks like the Cappiello campaign got the message out and clear, removed the ad, and replaced it with a new one with the proper attribution.

Hopefully, a lesson has been learned. For a state lawmaker and desires to be federal lawmaker, this clear violation of the law from Cappiello is most troubling and the fact that his campaign has not even offered an apology for this incident is all the more disturbing.