A picture in a piece of campaign literature sent by the campaign of Mayor Martin Chavez apparently includes an image taken by local freelance photographer Mark Bralley –and used without his permission. Blogger Ched MacQuigg, who uses Bralley’s photos on his blog with permission, tells the story.

I should note that MacQuigg is no fan of Chavez, or, indeed, many politicians. He writes:

Marty Chavez has stolen one of Bralley’s photographs.

It was stolen from a story on Bralley’s own website, link.

The photo, a somewhat unflattering image of mayoral candidate Richard Romero, is available here, the original on the left and the version in Chavez’s literature on the right. To the naked eye, they do appear to be the same image.

As NMI has previously reported, all published photographs are inherently copyrighted. As Albuquerque intellecutal property attorney Paul Adams told NMI last year:

“The test for copyright infringement is called substantial similarity through the eyes of the ordinary observer,” he explains. If the matter went to court, a jury would be asked to judge whether the two images are alike enough.

MacQuigg writes that he doesn’t believe the mayor knew the image was taken from Bralley’s site without permission, but that he should take responsibility for it anyway.