Many people wrote me about my post yesterday ("Stephen Schwartz, Web Moron") thinking that Mr. Schwartz must have been joking when he demanded we stop linking to his photograph.
I assure you, Stephen Schwartz was not joking. I am including excerpts from the 15 emails he sent me yesterday. Mr. Schwartz went on about a number of subjects (mostly about his mother and how much more important he is than Justin Raimondo) but I am only quoting the sections (and my responses) having to do with our right to link to a publicly-available web page.
Stephen Schwartz: You have no right to misuse a copyrighted photo of me. Remove it from your links forthwith.
Eric Garris: You have no right to use the copyrighted photo of Justin Raimondo you ran on your article. Are you only able to accuse people of things that you are guilty of yourself? It certainly appears that way.
SS: I had nothing to do with the illustration of Dennis Raimondo included on FPM. I am not an officer, editor, board member, or otherwise involved with FPM except as an unpaid contributor. You and Dennis, on the other hand, have full responsibility for what appears on your site. Are you really so stupid as not even to understand this, while dispensing advice on how to use hyperlinks and so forth? If you had a problem with the use of the photo, you should have directed it to Horowitz and FPM, not me. It was a photo taken from your website. I was not consulted about it. The photograph of me is copyrighted and is not used on websites. It is used only by my publisher — a serious mainstream publisher called Random House. It is not your property to misuse, notwithstanding your alleged devotion to property rights. Remove it immediately.
EG: There is no copyright violation, we have not posted it, we are just linking to it. As I explained to your lawyer two years ago, there is no copyright infringement by linking. It IS public because it IS on a Website available to link to. We are just pointing to it.
SS: It is a copyrighted photo, stupid. You cannot use it without permission. It is only on publicity connected with the book and authorized by Random House. I’m copying all of this to them. You need to hire a lawyer. There is copyright involved in linking.
EG: We have not used it, we merely pointed to the Website that anyone on the Internet can look at it. Only an idiot would not understand the difference.
SS: Look at the picture, stupid. It has a world copyright mark on it. THE ATLANTIC used it with permission of the photographer. You cannot derive permission from that use. Invest in a dictionary, or look up copyright on the net, if you can’t afford a call to a lawyer.
EG: We are not using it, we are linking to it. The courts have said that linking is the same as citing something. I don’t need a lawyer, I have consulted with yours.
SS: Western Policy and TCS have my permission to use my picture. You do not. But the matter will be handled.
EG: We did not use the picture. Do you really believe that citations are the same as publishing something?
SS: Your Goebbels-esque attempt to twist language would be funny if it were not so lame. Yeah, I’m not in the game, but I appear on TV and my books are published by mainstream publishers, not as self-published pamphlets. Gosh, you’ve hurt me so bad. This is over. You’ve done me plenty of favors with this; I shouldn’t have complained.
SS (next day, after no further response from me): Playing slippery amateur dialectics with me doesn’t work. The use of the photo without permission is just one issue. Your collective statements, since you are responsible for Dennis’s libels as much as he is, about my marital status and religious status at birth are also at issue. They were made without any knowledge on your part and demonstrate the general pattern of reckless defamation pursued by your little clique of increasingly ignored nobodies. This isn’t a matter of changing the subject. It’s the same subject. You are deliberate liars, fabricators, and publishers of libels.