Dan "Thieficella" steals from single mom writer!

Mr. "Business Supporter" himself, State Sen. Dan Debicella, apparently thinks it's perfectly acceptable to steal anyone's intellectual property for his own purposes, despite being asked to cease and desist by the copyright owner.

Sarah Darer Littman, a journalist, novelist, and a blogger known as "Saramerica", as well as being a single mom, discovered that video footage she personally shot at a Greenwich DTC meeting was lifted without permission and used in a negative ad by Dan Debicella. Ms. Littman notified the campaign and requested they immediately withdraw the ad from the internet and TV.

After no response from the campaign, Ms. Littman took the step of notifying Youtube that the video in question was undeniably hers and being used without permission. Youtube removed the ad and posted a copyright infringement notice within hours.

However, people are reporting that Cablevision is still running the ad today, a full 24 hours since Sarah notified the campaign to stop using her property. This means that although the campaign is fully aware that they are stealing the property of a private citizen and journalist/writer who makes her living from her intellectual property, they chose to ignore that fact.

How is this "pro-small business", Mr. Thieficella?

From My Left Nutmeg (used with permission, all rights reserved):

So someone sent me a link to a new Dan Debicella ad on You Tube this morning and asked me if I knew that my footage from the Greenwich DTC was in it. I was like "???? WTF ?????"

Watched the offending video. Sure enough, there, lifted directly out of my YouTube footage of Jim Himes' speech from the Greenwich DTC picnic in September, were clips included in Debicella's attack ad.

Had Debicella's campaign contacted me, the owner of this material to ask my permission to use it? No.

They'd just lifted it. STOLEN it, as we say in the intellectual property field.

See, as a writer, I make my living from intellectual property, so I take this stuff VERY seriously. I called Debicella's campaign this morning and asked to speak to his campaign manager. He was "unavailable". Sent a "cease and desist" email, just in case the campaign flack who answered the phone didn't pass on my message.

Never got a phone call back.

But what I did do was report the thieving bastard to You Tube, linking to my original video and showing exactly the place where they'd lifted the footage.

That was yesterday. No response from them at all.

This is from Sarah today:

I've called Cablevision to alert them that Debicella is running an ad using my footage for which he doesn't have permission, and that I've already issued him a cease and desist. I am waiting for a call back from their ad person.

Let me know if you see it running anywhere else.

Since Debicella's team has ignored my email & phone call, I'm consulting a lawyer.

You can't ignore this, Dan! This ain't going to go away! Pull the ads now, and apologize to Ms. Littman for your wrongful and thieving ways!