Yesterday, as we were tending our garden, and as you—some of you, at least, perhaps an organized phalange?—were filling one of our exclusive Gutter Fora to the very brim, Cameron Sinclair was rallying his lawyers. Remember how they nailed Capone? Taxes! Fucking taxes!! Irked at our tweaking twirpishness—so full of heart and soul—the thought police rallied; seems Architecture 4 Humanity's stable of photographers is pissed that we used some of their images and, because we're good doobies (or at least Our Keeper is...), they (the pics, not the photogs, silly!) were yanked. Look at the utter sterility of it all, the lowly, pixel-poor poverty of abject horrortude that is the unillustrated post! And they were glorious, glorious images! Cam striding the stage at the 2004 GOP convention, astride a yak in Mumbai, drinking from a fetid pool in Regina! What use are they if they reside on but one server? Is not the point of making art to show it? And we're not hypocrites: Take these words! Give them wings!!!!

Then there's the little issue of Mr. Sinclair accusing this site of ruining some do-goodness he had in the works. Just because a previous 'sniper called a crack ho a crack ho? Seems kinda...precipitous. He spelled it all out in a letter to Lock. Confront our demons after the jump.

Dear Mr. Steele,

I have been ask on behalf of a number of photographers to let you all know that images used in the gutter posts on Curbed.com dated December 7th, December 6th, August 9th and October 14th are copyright protected and all parties, including our legal representatives Jenner and Block, have image captures of each of these pages and have been informed that images have been used, appropriated and rehosted by curbed.com without permission of each photographer and ourselves. Additionally our organization is bound under a creative commons developing nations license meaning all projects, images and content have full legal copyright in developed nations. I have included this license and highlight [sic] your breach of it.

As the blogger who uploaded these posts is protected by curbed.com it’s [sic] owner and hosts will be held accountable. Continual usage of these images may incur legal restitution by individual photographers and a ‘good faith’ donation to non-profits if [sic] their choosing.

As a good faith effort we ask that you remove these images used and refrain from taking images without explicit permission from its [sic] source.

You will also be pleased to know that as a direct result to your posts on august [sic] 15th and September 22nd the project for low-income housing for Magdalene house has been cancelled [sic] and we are no longer providing support and pro-bono [sic] services for the NGO. We are also talking with our legal representatives in regard to this matter.

Cheers,
Cameron Sinclair

Posted in Gutter Talk