from the yellow section of PoliticsNJ (06/03/05)
A Dean for President campaign photographer disputes a claim by a web design firm working for Bret Schundler that a photo of Howard Dean doctored to include Schundler was taken by them. The firm's owner had claimed the photo belonged to them.
"It's a photo I took as Dean Campaign staff photographer and I'm waiting for a call back from the lawyers representing Big Fish on how they are going to handle the copyright violation. I own all rights to the image. If they claimed any rights they are seriously off base," John Pettitt told PoliticsNJ.com.
In an e-mail on Wednesday, Schundler's web designer, Tom Frank, told PoliticsNJ.com: "The original photograph is a photograph that Big Fish, as a vendor to Howard Dean's campaign, took at a Dean rally. The second photo image is a photo collage, composed of a well-known image of Bret Schundler superimposed on top of the original crowd shot from the Dean rally."
"When the Schundler campaign was advised by a news organization that a photo image on our website was, in fact, a doctored photo, we ordered our web services vendor to remove it immediately," said Schundler spokesman Bill Pascoe. "We did not ask them to doctor a photo of a Howard Dean rally; we did not authorize them to doctor a photo of a Howard Dean rally; we did not know they had doctored a photo of a Howard Dean rally.
"As anyone who visits the front page of our website can see, Bret Schundler has no difficulty generating crowds of supporters wherever he goes. The amazing thing – and, in fact, the really newsworthy thing – is that Democrats are pushing this “story” as hard as they are. Obviously, Democrats prefer Doug Forrester as the Republican nominee – clearly, they are scared of Bret Schundler," Pascoe said. (06/03/05)