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Last week, ThinkProgress broke the news that both senatorial candidates Sharron Angle (R-NV) and Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) used the same racially-tinged image in separate attack ads against their opponents and described the subjects in the photo as “illegal aliens.” Besides invoking offensive anti-Latino stereotypes, the photographer of the photo, Chris Floyd, later informed the Washington Post that the “illegal aliens” in the picture were actually Mexicans still in Mexico.

Now it appears both ads have been removed from YouTube. Vitter’s is marked as “private,” and Angle’s video has been pulled down due to a “copyright claim by Getty Images, Inc.”

In a phone interview with ThinkProgress, Floyd indicated that he’s still waiting to hear himself what, if any, legal actions Getty Images is pursuing. Floyd explained that he has a contract with Getty which means that they have the “first right to pursue legal action in the event of a copyright violation.”

However, Floyd did seem confident that the Angle and Vitter campaigns are at the very least morally, if not legally, culpable:

I think this is a question of principle. The only legal place they could’ve obtained that image [on the Getty Images website] clearly printed out that the people in the photo were not illegal aliens, but Mexicans in Mexico. That means they either purposefully deceived their audience or they stole the photo from somewhere else.

Whether it was done intentionally or not, Floyd maintains that “they [the Vitter and Angle campaigns] completely distorted the reality of my photo.” ……..  Full article is here