Unseen 9/11 photos bought at house clearance sale | Hacker News Reader

Unseen 9/11 photos bought at house clearance sale

bbc.com

87 pointsyitchelle34 comments

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20199667

Here's a link to a Twitter thread where my coworker Jason Scott (textfiles) talks about the origin of the photos/etc: https://twitter.com/textfiles/status/1138537238537625601

I highly recommend people visit the 9/11 Museum in NYC if you ever have the chance. It's exceptionally well done and comprehensive.

Is there a discussion anywhere on how it's legal to publish these copyrighted photos without permission of the author?

Given that authorship is unknown, this comment seems overly pedantic.

[Edit to add: I'm going to assume he's still in contact with the family from some of his twitter comments, and that they'll benefit from any money made from this. So they own the copyright and they'll benefit from any money made here.]

Maybe. There's historical significance here for sure.

But the author is not unknown. Jason Scott says "he's dead" so the author is known to be dead. And copyright just doesn't evaporate when you're dead. His heirs own the copyright.

And he's also discussing having people contact him for "reproduction rights". He doesn't own the rights. Am I wrong? IANAL.

Interesting cache of photos though.

Or the heirs could just sue. See Vivian Maier:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivian_Maier

Copyright is a civil issue. It's completely legal, you just run the risk of the new owners suing for damages. Which honestly seems pretty unlikely in this case.

Yes. This happened before, most notably in the case of Vivian Maier. In short, it's not.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivian_Maier

People have weird hobbies!

Edit: I mean he went and bought some random CDs, He discovered this really great photos but how long he is doing this for? How many CDs he bought and looked at?

You'd love his DEFCON talk! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSWqx8goqSY

This is great, thanks!

Until he finds one with a bitcoin wallet on it, I guess!

Hopefully the key is there with it.

People didn't encrypt wallets, back in the day.

Sure, but wouldn't you need the key to sign a transaction to move/use the coins?

That's part of the wallet.

A bitcoin wallet is just a collection of private keys.

And that's why it's so important to encrypt them. And for wallets controlling huge amounts, to keep them offline. Air-gapped, I mean.

Jason Scott is a treasure. People will be thanking him for his preservation efforts for millennia.

If you're not familiar with him and his work, check out his website (http://textfiles.com) and the excellent _Jason Scott Talks His Way Out of It_ podcast (http://ascii.textfiles.com/podcast).

Per the quote in the article, "people who are moved by them should consider donating to a worthy cause of their choice", if anyone is moved by these photos and doesn't know where to make a donation, you might consider supporting Jason's work on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/textfiles/posts) or making a donation to The Internet Archive (https://archive.org/), where he works.

(I'm not affiliated with Jason or The Internet Archive in any way, but I am (as you can probably tell) a big fan of both.)

Potentially dangerous hobby. What if one of those CDs had child porn on it and it was in a stack he didn't look at/index. Then some Police have a warrant for something unrelated, find the CDs and charge him.

Possession of such material is a strict liability crime. Intent doesn't matter, nor even knowledge that you have the material. That's what happened in the case of Paul Reubens (Pee Wee Herman).

What if I made a web server that returns a file that has the same content as the base64 encoded requested name? For example Echo.com/SGVsbG8.txt would return a utf8 text file with the content “hello”. If a smart ass sent a certain link to law enforcement it would serve illegal content.

I think legally its still simple, the base64 encoding is still illegal content. Just because it's not easily recognizable as so doesn't change what it is. As long as it's easy enough for law enforcement to prove the string when decoded is illegal content, then the act of sending the string is the crime. Law enforcement being in possession of it would just be evidence like usual.

What a dangerous law. All a bad actor has to do is plant incriminating material on a target’s computer and they can be put away for years.

It's even worse in the UK. Someone can put an encrypted file on a thumb drive and put it in your belongings. You're required by law to give passwords in the UK and if you're unable to, you just go to prison.

Is it possible to embed images in email, and disable display? If so, a spam campaign could leave child porn in cache on millions of machines. Or it could be targeted, combined with a SWAT.

Finding photos on a CD that you bought at a house clearance sale does not magically transfer their copyright to you and give you the right to publish them in the media.

I wonder what their legal status would be if the photo's owners were not contactable or identifiable? In the article, it said

"Dr Burgess said he and Mr Scott had so far been unsuccessful in tracking down the photographer or any relatives."

My guess is that you will need to wait 70 years for it to enter the public domain or until any heirs are found. If you decide to sell a book with these photos, you risk of some rightful heir coming out of the woodwork and suing you for damages. The case of Vivian Maier comes to mind.

It'd be an orphan work: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orphan_works_in_the_United_Sta...

That is, unfortunately, true. Death of the owner still puts the rights on the estate receivership. Unlikely to be connected, but legally pertinent.

The so-called "hackers" around here aren't what they used to be.

Indeed, sometimes I miss the old Slashdot

That's correct. But sometimes you just have to use your best judgement, and hope that the potential legal exposure is overshadowed by the benefit.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com