Why You Should Never Lose Your Digital Media

kkrista writes "What would you do if you found someone's digital media card from their camera in your taxi? One such individual has decided to provide the world with 227 days of entertainment. I Found Some Of Your Life will post a photo a day and accompanying fictional narrative for the next 227 days using the photos found on a digital media card left in a cab. Is it pure genius or pure evil? Who cares? Just be thankful they're not your photos."

Wait a minute

Those ARE my pictures! Please Slashdot them so no one can see them! Thanks.

Re:You could always DMCA the bastard.

Surely, even if a 'finders-keepers' rule applies, it doesn't cover the photos, which are covered by copyright. If this is not the case, then any photograph, radio signal, dvd, etc that you found in such a juristiction would ultimately end up in the PD.

He might gain ownership of the storage device, but I doubt the content on it

Re:You could always DMCA the bastard.

IANAL, but my law classes say this is correct. You have copyright over everything you create, unless its covered by some else first (ie, if I happen to make the exact thing as you, even if I haven't seen yours, you own in)

Re:You could always DMCA the bastard.

You never lose title to something after is been lost. I can lose a diamond now, and if I can proved 70 years from now its mine, its still my diamond, and whomever has it has to give it back to me.

Thank you sir, may I have another photo published?

It's truly one of the great blogs of all time, IMO. Ya just gotta read it from the beginning [blogspot.com] to savor it fully. Soon however, perhaps even tonight via this very thread, the gig, as they say, will be up.

One of "Jordan's" Slashdot-reading frat brothers (probably the goofy EE major who got in on a legacy bid) will spill the beans. I'd love to be a fly on the paddle-festooned wall for that moment.

What will happen next? The blogger has been careful to conceal his or her identity. What are the legal issues? Can the blog continue? Does the blogger face any liabilities?

If "Jordan" and his chums play it one way, they could be minor celebrities for a while--perhaps concealing their knowledge of the blog's existence to let the thing reach critical mass. Jordan could be the next Mahir! "I am Jordan! I high five you!"

On the other hand, they can probably bring terrible, expensive legal might to bear. What will blogspot do? What will become of America's new best-loved blog?

This little dramady is just beginning! heh

Re:Thank you sir, may I have another photo publish

I'll leave the legal issues for the lawyers to handle - but more importantly, is it ethical?

If you found someone's driver's wallet with their driver's license and credit cards, would you go ahead and impersonate them or steal their identity? It would be an identity theft - in some ways, I think that is exactly what this guy is doing.

I shudder to think what will happen if the real guy finds out. I for one know that if my pics were put up on the net - I would certainly get very mad, very pissed and would sue this guy to kingdom come.

Leave the fun and coolness part of it - it's just not quite right, it's unethical and wrong. I do not know about anybody else, but in my book what this guy is doing is simply wrong.

Re:Thank you sir, may I have another photo publish

I can understand being mad, wanting an apology, and wanting the blog aken down, and maybe criminal proceedings if any laws were broken. But why do people think they deserve money for something like this? What have they lost? Mental suffering? Bullshit. People are just greedy bastards.

/Rant

Re:Thank you sir, may I have another photo publish

The point isn't that they should receive the money. The point is that the person who's being an antisocial asshole deserves to LOSE it. After that, the person he wronged might as well get it.

Re:Thank you sir, may I have another photo publish

But why do people think they deserve money for something like this?

Distributing copyrighted works without permission, especially unpublished copyrighted works straight out of a camera, can result in severe statutory damages.

Re:Thank you sir, may I have another photo publish

Actually...

Having government registration allows you to have a more solid footing.

What is important in Copyright infringement cases is to prove intent. In this case, the poster KNEW the content was not their's to use and fully intended to post the content up.

The poster also decided to create fake events around the pictures. This can lead to slander/libel cases if the posted content results in mental anguish, loss of job, or other personal losses.

The quality of the pictures is not the point, the theft and misuse of the pictures is.

It would be very funny if the pictures actually belonged to a law student. *grins*

Re:Thank you sir, may I have another photo publish

Interesting. Your comments caused me to double check the logistics of how a copyright is actually enabled. Basically, you don't do anything. You need to register things with the government en order to sue for damages, but you can do that anytime up until the copyright expires (Life+70).

Trademarks you have to continually enforce; copyrights you don't have to do a thing other than have created it. The © symbol is not necessary, its more of a reminder.
----
Comments by squigit, © 2004

Re:Thank you sir, may I have another photo publish

The point is that what this person is doing is wrong. Taking another's property (no matter where you found it) is simply illegal. And using it in any way that the person would not approve of is definitely wrong (and now you would be telling me that the person who posted this stuff would not mind his pics being posted?).

It's not being greedy - for having done something like this, I'd like to see the other person suffer. The idea of sending a man to prison is not to make others feel happy - it's to make HIM feel bad and pay for his crime. Whether or not it works is a different issue, the idea is that you are punished for your actions.

Duh, I can't help it if you have an idea that taking a person to court is merely for my monetary benefit. That's YOUR flawed thinking, nowhere in my post did I suggest so. I merely said I'd sue this person for his wrongful act.

Is there anything in wanting to take a person to court because s/he posted my pics? And ofcourse, the brilliant Slashdot mods will moderate it down because nobody ever stops to think for a moment what the post really meant.

Sheesh.

Re:Thank you sir, may I have another photo publish

It's not being greedy - for having done something like this, I'd like to see the other person suffer. The idea of sending a man to prison is not to make others feel happy - it's to make HIM feel bad and pay for his crime. Whether or not it works is a different issue, the idea is that you are punished for your actions.

Are you sure about that? I always thought the idea of punishments was to deter actual and potential offenders?

You'd like to see the other person suffer? That's rather small of you. Personally, I'd like to think that the intent of the law is to reduce suffering...

Re:Thank you sir, may I have another photo publish

I'd like to see the other person suffer

Wow, that's a statement. Too bad you weren't born in the 15th century, the Spanish Inquisition had a perfect job for you.

Re:Thank you sir, may I have another photo publish

That was unexpected.

Because thats all people understand

Unfortunately in todays society people really don't understand the consequences of their actions unless its associated with a dollar value. Money is an excellent deterent.

Re:Thank you sir, may I have another photo publish

Well, there's the copyright issue, for one... Any picture taken is, by default, owned by the person who took it, even if it's not registered with the copyright office. Distribution of said photos, without consent is a straightforward copyright breech. I don't even think it could fall under the parody clause, necessarily, but I haven't read the blog to see how funny or ironic it might be. It certainly doesn't fall under the fair use doctrine, particularly if you consider the contents of one memory stick to be a single collection of work, which is how the blogger is treating this.

Re:Thank you sir, may I have another photo publish

But why do people think they deserve money for something like this? What have they lost? Mental suffering? Bullshit.

Obviously you are not from California.

Re:Thank you sir, may I have another photo publish

What have they lost?

Well, a memory card for one.

Re:Thank you sir, may I have another photo publish

I can understand being mad, wanting an apology, and wanting the blog aken down, and maybe criminal proceedings if any laws were broken. But why do people think they deserve money for something like this?

They deserve to ask for punitive damages [wikipedia.org] to punish and deter people from commiting these kinds of acts. And an extreme amount of public exposure can bring all sorts of problems like stalkers and death threats. There are a lot of loons out there that will target someone simply for being well-known publicly. Someone in that kind of a position will need security. Who is going to pay for it? If a person receiving a great deal of public exposure isn't someone like an actor who actually recieves an income relative to that exposure, then what financial recourse do they have to protect themself from the reprocussions?

What have they lost?

They have lost their privacy. Having pictures posted on the internet against one's will is an invasion of privacy, especially if it gets Slashdotted. Remember the Star Wars Kid [wikipedia.org]? He and his family weren't too happy about all that and took the parents of the kids that put his video on the net to court. They didn't want any part of the internt cult status the practical joke had given him and would have preferred not to have him humiliated with that kind of exposure.

Even if these photos are taken down by the poster, they could already have been copied and circulated around the net, just like the Star Wars Kid. And just because you're not doing anything wrong in a photo doesn't mean your privacy should be left to others to toy with and take away. Isn't privacy a fundamental right?

Mental suffering?

Something like this can indeed cause mental suffering. Have you ever heard of social phobia [wikipedia.org]? It is a very real anxiety disorder, and someone with such a condition could be severely traumatised if they had their privacy invaded with all the internet as an audience, even if the photos were innocuous.

What if a photo of yourself in an embarassing situation had been circulated on the net without your consent? A practical joke between friends is one thing, but letting a worldwide audience through the internet see it is another and can cause extreme humiliation and mental suffering.

Re:Thank you sir, may I have another photo publish

"would you go ahead and impersonate them or steal their identity?"
No, and neither is this guy... he has there, for all to see, the disclaimer that this is all 'MADE UP', that what is being said is not the truth.

It's almost as if the card was meant to be left there, what with exactly one year of photos on it... almost like it was an arts project.

Or not.

It is amusing though... and from what I've seen, there's nothing there to be really worried about if they were your photos. Plus, he's now got them on the net in a professional manner for his friends to see. (and it's not like he could get off his arse to do so himself if there was a year's worth of shots on there)

Re:Thank you sir, may I have another photo publish

Are you kidding me? If I left a roll of film around (cuz I don't have digital), somebody developed it, & turned it into a blog with a funny story attached to it, i'd think it were freaking hilarious! I'd want the pictures back, of course, but as long as they weren't crude about it, I could really care less.

Re:Thank you sir, may I have another photo publish

If you read this comment [blogspot.com], you'll see that someone already found one of the people in the photo a while ago. The conclusion of the discussion at the time was that the participants should be allowed to 'discover for themselves.'

Hopefully the meta-drama will half as fun as the blog so far :)

(Yeah, it's pretty wrong. But hilarious.)

Re:Thank you sir, may I have another photo publish

Here you go people.

First a picture from "I Found Some of Your Life"

Dianne [blogger.com]

Now a picture from KappaDelta

Lindsey [vanderbilt.edu]

That's basically the comment that got deleted.

And those are the same person!

Re:Thank you sir, may I have another photo publish

how many taxi drivers do you know that are smart enough to create a blog, making the images smaller for display, and witty enough to go and make up a story on it?

Ummmm, how many taxi drivers do you know at all? I have a good friend who's a Taxi driver and he's very intelligent; just not motivated enough to do something else for a living. Among his colleagues there are quite a few very intelligent guys, who have various reasons for driving a taxi: Some are students (it's perfect for the flexible hours), at least 2 I've met are even PhD's in purely academic fields (i.e. no big job opportunities); one was like a PhD in Music Theory or something and plays in a Folk Music group, which isn't lucrative enough to make a living, but he loves it. Okay, this is in Germany, but I think this applies elsewhere too.

-chris

Quoth I Southpark

"Hey Cartman, isn't that your mom?"

I'm jealous

Actually, I wish my life were interesting enough right now that somebody would want to build a website based on my photos.

Day 1: This is wrinkledshirt on Slashdot.
Day 2: This is wrinkledshirt on Slashdot.
Day 3: This is wrinkledshirt cursing spymac mail.
Day 4: This is wrinkledshirt cursing Slashdot for not posting his spymac submission.
Day 5: This is wrinkledshirt on Slashdot.
And so on...

I love sites like these

Found photo sites are the best.

http://www.spillway.com/ is still the king of "found photos on the Internet."

RSS Feed

They have an RSS feed [blogspot.com], so if you have your shiny new mozilla 1.0PR, then you can easily make it a live bookmark [mozilla.org].

Just click on the lightning bolt in the bottom left corner of the browser. It's really neat :)

Sorry to all of those who have been using RSS feeds forever.. I just got hooked :)

Keep in mind

Keep in mind that there have been hoax blogs before. Did they really find the camera card? Do you believe every blog is true? [themorningnews.org]

Re:Keep in mind

Keep in mind that there have been hoax blogs before. Did they really find the camera card?

Either (a) it's a hoax, or (b) the author doesn't realize this is a lawsuit waiting to happen.

Re:Keep in mind

Actually, I know some of the guys in the pictures. They're frat boys from Vanderbilt, my school. I am privileged enough to have gotten drunk on their beer freshman year.

In any case, I happen to know that they are nowhere near smart enough or geeky enough to create a blog out of their pictures, let alone do so as a hoax.

Heh.

> Just be thankful they're not your photos.

Fortunately he didn't find the card with pix of his wife.

Presumed copyright

What are the copyright issues here? I'm assuming that by default the pictures are protected by a copyright belonging to the owner of the memory stick. If I am right, this could be a problem for blogspot.

Indeed.

Just be thankful they're not your photos.

I wholeheartedly agree.

Regards,
Arthur Goatse.cx, Sr.

Damm Proctologist

That is the last time I'll every trust my proctologist again...

Regards,
Arthur Goatse.cx, Sr

Kappa Delta

At first I thought they looked like frat boys, and sorority girls, then I saw the white shirt dude's tag:
google: Kappa Delta [google.com]

Actually it's purely illegal

The taking of the card itself is theft. If you find something on the sidewalk, in a cab, etc that does not belong to you, you do not have the right to take and keep it. It is still property of the orignal owner. To keep it is theft, pure and simple.

However this is also a case of copyright infringement. Works are automatically copyright to you upon creation, no registration is required. So these photos are the copyright of whomever shot them. To post them on the Internet without their permission is infringement.

If I was the person who this happened to, I'd go after the blogger with a vengence. Instead of being a good citizen and either handing it over to the police or trying to track me down and instead of just being neutral, and leaving it, they decided to be malicious.

Personally, I hope they go to jail.

What about model releases?

It's also a bad idea because he has no model releases from anyone in the photos. Any one of them could bring a lawsuit against him.

Re:That's a little more grey.

It's clear that the vast majority of the people in the pictures are posing for the pictures

They may be posing, but not for you. They have a very strong case against the blogger.

Additionally, most of the pictures are in public. There probably isn't a whole lot of expectation that your picture won't be taken/distributed if you're posing for a picture in public.

There is a very reasonable expectation if you don't see any unauthorized photographer close to you. We are not talking about spy cameras here, these are decent quality pictures taken either on private property, or with flash in darkness.

Re:What about model releases?

Jesus christ, model releases are for when you use images in the PROMOTION of a commercial product/service, etc. Please know of what you speak. There would be very little to no photographic art if you had to obtain a "release" from anyone and anything.

Re:Actually it's purely illegal

You might be going in the right direction, but I think your feelings in this are a little extreme. First off, how the hell is he supposed to find the guy this belonged to? The card was found in a taxi in NYC. Going to the police wouldn't do anything as they would be more concerned with catching murderers and rapists than returning somebody's momentos. Leaving it in the cab wouldn't do any good either, as it would end up in the hands of another rider later on, or pawned off as soon as the driver found it at the end of the day. The only feasible way this would get back to the owner in a physical manner would be to give it to the driver of the cab and hope he puts it in lost and found. This would of course require the owner to call that particular cab company to see if someone picked up a memory card for a camera.

Secondly, the copyright infringement case would be difficult to make. Granted he is infringing on someone else's copyright, but he is not doing it for financial gain. I don't even see ads on the page (aside from a blogger banner at the top). Also how would somebody assess the value of these pictures. Criminal offenses for copyright infringement don't occur until the infringer has caused a significant amount of financial damage (a few hundred thousand dollars IIRC). I would be hard pressed to believe these pictures are worth that much.

If I was the person who lost the card, and I found out about the site, and if I were angry about it, I'd get a cease and desist letter sent and prove that I was the owner of the card. It's likely the blogger would close the page and return the card. The end result of this is the guy who lost his card would get it back, and the site would go down if the owner chose to do so. This would not happen if the site was not getting this much publicity, and may infact become the best chance for the owner to get his card back, along with some measure of internet immortality.

Personally, I hope the owner of the card gets it back and doesn't mind seeing the blogger continue his series.

Re:Actually it's purely illegal

(First, please note: I am not a lawyer, only a law student. Don't rely on this as legal advice!)

That's not true. The finder has the basic common law title to the item as against all but the original owner. Title to property is relative. The finder has "worthier title" to the property than anyone but the original owner.

Now everything I'm about to say is based on the presumption that this is "lost property" rather than "abandoned property"...

This seems to be valid law in NY. See Hume v. Elder, 178 A.D. 652, 165 N.Y.S. 849 (2d Dep't 1917); Forman v. Rosetti, 38 Misc. 2d 317, 238 N.Y.S.2d 328 (City Civ. Ct. 1963); Garramone v. Simmons, 177 Misc. 330, 30 N.Y.S.2d 465 (Sup 1941)...

But at the moment he finds it, he only has an expectation of that title in NY, and he has to wait for the statutory time period to elapse, and the owner not to claim the item, for title to vest. See Bisignano v. Harrison Central School Dist., 113 F. Supp. 2d 591, 147 Ed. Law Rep. 529 (S.D.N.Y. 2000).

He gives it to the police, they keep it for a period, and when the owner doesn't claim it, and the time period expires, he can demand it back and his title vests.

The periods are described in N.Y. Pers. Prop. Law 253(7), and are basically...

* three months, if the property has a value of less than $ 100.00
* six months, if the property has a value between $ 100.00 and $ 499.99
* one year, if the property has a value between $ 500.00 and $ 4999.99
* three years, if the property has a value of $ 5000.00 or more

But there's more! This guy may be guilty of a misdemeanor:

N.Y. Pers. Prop. Law 252(1) says he has to turn it in to the cops within 10 days. 252(3) says anyone convicted of noncompliance is guilty of a misdemeanor punishable by up to a $100 fine or 6 months in jail or both.

He also may be guilty of larceny:

N.Y. Penal Law 155.05(2)(b) says this could be larceny if he doesn't take reasonable measures to return the property.

Just goes to show, use your instincts about what's right, and you'll probably be much better off... ;)

Not at all

An author CHOOSES to open source something. They actually make a specific declaration, in the form of the GPL. The choose to grant you a license to redistribute their work. That wasn't done here, the bloggers stole a card and then published the contents without the creator's permission. That's copyright infringement.

This is one of the things that bugs me about /. the hacker, or script-kiddie (which a large number of /. posters seem to be) mentality that if you CAN do it would should be allowed to. That it's ok to break in and copy someone's code and put it on the net, or to hack an insecure box and use it as your personal playground.

No, it isn't.

It's the same as the physical world and goes back to basic kindergarden eithics: "Don't touch what isn't yours without the permission of who it belongs to." This is as true for vitrual stuff as physical stuff. It isn't any more legal or morally justified to steal a CF card and publish the pictures than it is to steal a wallet and use the cash to buy yourself stuff.

Even if you don't believe in copyright, you can hardly justify the theft of the card. That's real, physical property and they deprived the owner of it.

Asymmetric laws *can* make sense

It might be legal to download music, but illegial to share it... Well if nobody shares it, nobody can download it.

This might be a stupid idea; or it might not.

Since they are two sides of the same coin, the act we wish to prevent is basically downloading/sharing. Making one illegal, but not the other shifts the emphasis of responsibility for the 'combined act' onto one party. This may be more practical in terms of law enforcement (better to prosecute one sharer than many downloaders).

In other cases with similar 'contradictions', such asymmetry may have the effect of protecting one party (e.g. if you simply made it a crime for an underage child to have sexual intercourse with an adult, you may be setting up the situation where a 14-year old is in danger of being blackmailed by a 40-year old, for fear of prosecution; and criminalising the 14-year old would almost certainly go against the spirit of the law).

Evil...

Not really evil, because the pictures don't really contain all that much. But still, if something like this happens, you should treat it like finding someone's credit card or driver's license. If you can find the owner, the owner would appreciate having it back. If you can't find the owner, laugh with your friends if you want, but don't post it.

Pure Copyright Infringement

The idea of posting someone's photos, without permission and one at a time, is funny but wrong. It would be one thing if they just posted a few so the owner could know who had them and how to get them back, but that is not what is happening. Plus, the photos are automatically copyright by the person who took them. The blogger does not have permission or fair use rights to post all of the photos to the internet for their own amusement.

Camera in the woods

Sounds very much like the Camera in the woods [gtaforums.com]which turned out to be a hOaX with most of the pictures photoshopped with aliens and stuff

Re:Camera in the woods

Damn, those are some creepy photos.

Where's the evidence that says it's a hoax?

The photos that come after the one at the top of the tower where you see the creepy hunched over guy's reflection are clearly meant to appear as though they were taken as the photographer ran like hell. The fact that none of them are blurry shows that he stopped to take each of these "frantic" shots carefully enough for them to be in perfect focus with no motion blur. The sequence was too carefully crafted and tells a linear story too clearly to be unintentional. It's not even half as believeable as The Blair Witch Project, and that was pretty obviously fiction as well.

Awhile back...

the Walmart photo website had a digital senior moment, and exchanged all of my photos with some random family's photos. My photos were of no consequence, (copies of product photos for work) but the photos they were replaced with were a window on a very poor family who lived in a trailer, had a t-topped Firebird up on blocks, and were suffering from poor dental hygiene.

There were about thirty-some shots that were all stereotypical 'poor southern family'. Very odd, and a little sad, until you realized that they were genuinely smiling in every picture.

Interesting stories played out in my head about this family until I got my boring pics back.

Re:Awhile back...

Only in the land of the free, where a family can be "very poor" and still own a digital camera.

You should start digicam-bombing people instead. Food is soo 1990.

This happened to me, sorta.

I was in Baton Rouge, LA. My car was having some problems with the AC and I stopped in at a Ford Dealer (Autobahn Ford) to get my R-12 recharged. Someone there took my Canon Powershot S30 with my IBM CompactFlash 384MB drive. Fucking redneck assholes. I should have beat the shit out of the inbred fucks working there, but that's a different story for a different day.

Regardless of how pissed I am at losing a $400 camera to a couple of asshats, I had some photos of my then girlfriend in various comprimising positions. To keep this brief, if I saw photos of her on the internet, bad things would happen to all involved. I wouldn't be surprised that if some of the images on that card are more personal, and if the owners get a glance, someone is gonna get hurt bad.

Re:This happened to me, sorta.

I had some photos of my then girlfriend in various comprimising positions

Now we *KNOW* you're lying.

Re:This happened to me, sorta.

I had some photos of my then girlfriend in various comprimising positions

Now we *KNOW* you're lying.

If the compromising position was

deflated then not necessarily!

Re:This happened to me, sorta.

asshat
n.
one who leaves his $400 camera (with personal porn) in the vehicle when taking it to a repair shop.

Absolute Scumbags

What would you do if you found someone's digital media card from their camera in your taxi

I would do what I would expect any decent person to do....give it to the driver and tell him someone left this behind. I can't image the sense of violation the owner will feel once identified. The scumbags putting these up for the world to see will face civil culpability almost certainly. IMHO they also belong behind bars, but I doubt this will happen. Now I eagerly await the flurry of posts along the lines of "Hey, they forgot the memory card so they deserve their private photos posted on the internet". This is Slashdot after all.

that sorority girl loves linux?!

ok look at this picture [blogger.com]. The girl in the left side with the with skirt has a tag that says says that she loves linux! It has 3 pictures of tux! oh wait... it seems it says "I love delta delta delta".... or is it?

Like Homer Simpson says...

It's funny because you don't know the person.

The Victims

One of the comments posted on the blog identified this sorority [vanderbilt.edu] as the source from another picture of one of the girls that was posted on their site.

Huge copyright issues and no fair use at all.

In preparation for opening a website lampooning politicians (DailyHaiku.com [dailyhaiku.com], I asked a friend who is an intellectual property lawyer for some advice on what would constitute fair use for the photos we were planning on appropriating from the AP and other such sources.

His advice was pretty telling. While we had a good fair use argument, he indicated we would most likely run into legal problems anyway with model releases for people who weren't public figures, and even some politicians (like Arnold Schwarzenegger [dailyhaiku.com] hotly contest their public figure status regarding copyright.

As it is we had to go strictly with photographs in the public domain (and thankfully almost everything the federal government produces counts) or expressly granted for general use.

Posting entire found pictures (actually an entire collection), especially if used with a profit motive, with no permission from the photographer and the subjects is just asking for an incredibly brutal pounding in court.

-dameron

Still waiting for my C&D from Dick Cheney...

Disappointed

First off I found the site very funny. Now reading the posts here, I'm very disappointed that I live in a country where everyone's first reaction to this seems to be "I'd sue the bastard" or "put him in jail".

Yes the guy who found the card should attempt to find the real owner, what better way? If he posted a few pics on the net, it would never get enough notoriaty to be found. Its a memory card, its not like there is an address and phone number on it. The cabby wouldn't be able to find the person, the person I'm sure doesn't know where exactly they lost it, and wouldn't be able to remember the cab companies name either. The cops would just junk it. This is the only way the real owner can get his pictures back.

Yes, in a way this is copyright infringment, but geeze, for a place that is sooo against musicians being able to keep people from copying things they actually make money off of, this guys pics seem like a bizarre hypocrisy to try to protect. It's not like he's a pro, or that he was gonna sell these pictures for money.

People here posting that this guy should be put in jail, or fined, or sued... well just chill out. He's having fun, I had a good laugh, and its actually possible that the real owner will get his pictures back, whereas if the poster didn't post them in this manner there is basically 0% chance that would happen.

If you think this is evil,

Check out Fusker [lewww.com]. Especially the photos from Photobucket and Live Journal. Those are worth checking out.

Re:If you think this is evil,

You should'a warned us you're linking to a porn site.

Regardless, it's not the same thing at all. An unprotected gallery on photobucket is much more fair game than stealing someone's memory card and platering it all over the web.

Welcome to Blackmail!

Hello and welcome to Blackmail! The way this works is we post once picture a day, but at any time you can email our hot..er.line and pay the amount of money listed at the bottom of the page to have the pictures removed.

Each day the price doubles...

With kudos to Python

The Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players

Reminds me of "The Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players" [slideshowplayers.com]. From their web site:

The TRACHTENBURG FAMILY SLIDESHOW PLAYERS are an indie-vaudeville conceptual art-rock pop band. We take vintage slide collections that have been found at estate sales,garage sales,thrift stores,etc., and turn the lives of annonymous strangers into pop-rock musical exposes based on the contents of these slide collections.

It's a little weirder than it sounds. [edit-video.com]

Those of you bitching about copyright:

How does this differ from Found Magazine [foundmagazine.com], a magazine which consists entirely of snippets of people's lives found lying around discarded or lost?

While the actions might be (since apparently the blogger actually does own the card) illegal or immoral, the end result was an interesting idea for something that is, essentially, a piece of art, and seeing the originator prosecuted would be a sad day.

I don't think this is funny ...

... this being one's personal photos for god's sake. It's like you found someone private journal and published it page by page in a magazine or something.

With more then 200 photos ranging along a year's time one could easily gather some clues which could lead to 1. the owner, 2. someone who knows the owner.

Instead of doing some research and making someone happy for finding the lost pictures, this guy places them widely available.

I wouldn't sue the guy for doing this. I would kick his ass flat.

How to get your digital card back

This is why I make the first image on my media cards be one that displays my contact information and then I lock it so it won't be erased accidentally.

I bought a keydrive that had stuff on it

I bought a USB keydrive at a computer show that still had stuff on it. The previous owner was apparantly a geologist working for various petroleum companies. He had some powerpoint slides in there that had his email address, so I was able to get in touch with him and send him a CDR with his files on it (he had already bought a replacement device). He didn't say how he lost/misplaced the drive -- might have actually been a cab or airport shuttle.

If the drive had contained photos, would I have posted them on the Internet? No, because they wouldn't have belonged to me. Would I have looked at them? Yes, I'm as curious as the next guy.

Chip H.

Site has been taken down

Monday, September 20, 2004
Editor's Note

Hi. No new posts until further notice.
If you know things: ifsoyl at gmail.com.

posted by jordan | 1:57 PM

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Thanks for ruining it for everyone, Slashdot :)

Actually, I figured with tidal wave of publicity a slashdotting gets you, plus the timbre of the legal-minded comments posted here, the site was doomed.

Gone Gone Gone

7:11 PM - the site has disappeared.

Re:So THAT'S where I left it...

We have irrefutable proof those are not your photos:

There are girls in the pictures.