GoodAsYou's Jeremy Hooper responds to NOM's spin on the stolen images he caught them using

Brian Brown, president of the National Organization for Marriage, the financially secretive East Coast carpetbaggers who are carpet bombing Iowa District 18 with pro-Cindy Golding mailers to defeat Liz Mathis, here tries to diminish the attention Rachel Maddow and others are calling to his situational ethics:

 ...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!

 Hooper:

Hooper, right, with husband in photo from his
website; Photographer: Jacklyn Greenberg

...Seriously?! NOM (these 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 de facto symbol for their own support base?! That's fair and common use in NOM world?!

      And it's even more galling when you consider that NOM has its own crowd shots from its own New Hampshire rallies. It's just that the Obama crowds are infinitely larger and are not half-filled with counter protestors, so therefore more convenient to use. Even if it's the crowd of a man who opposes most every plank on which the organization stands!

      Ugh. Can't this organization take responsibility for ANYTHING?!?!

*Oh, and reminder: Those swapped photos that NOM/Brian mentions in that last line above? Yeah -- they're not of New Hampshire either!

The New Civil Rights Movement adds:

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?