Slashdot Mirror
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."
Those ARE my pictures! Please Slashdot them so no one can see them! Thanks.
It's truly one of the great blogs of all time, IMO. Ya just gotta read it from the beginning 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
"...all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness..." yada yada
"Hey Cartman, isn't that your mom?"
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...
--------
Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
But they are my photos, you insensitive clod!
Found photo sites are the best.
http://www.spillway.com/ is still the king of "found photos on the Internet."
They have an RSS feed, so if you have your shiny new mozilla 1.0PR, then you can easily make it a live bookmark.
:)
:)
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 that there have been hoax blogs before. Did they really find the camera card? Do you believe every blog is true?
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Is it pure genius or pure evil? Who cares? Just be thankful they're not your photos.
Those ARE my photos you insensitive clod!
> Just be thankful they're not your photos.
Fortunately he didn't find the card with pix of his wife.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
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.
I wholeheartedly agree.
Regards,
Arthur Goatse.cx, Sr.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
At first I thought they looked like frat boys, and sorority girls, then I saw the white shirt dude's tag:
google: Kappa Delta
[blue] - The Ministry of Information approved this message...
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.
Shame the guy commentating hasn't been to Amsterdam - there was so much potential - there are photos of them inside those little booths in the red light area and all the comments say something inncoent about standing in a doorway! Potential ruined :(
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.
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.
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.
Sounds very much like the Camera in the woods which turned out to be a hOaX with most of the pictures photoshopped with aliens and stuff
fifteen jugglers, five believers
The original owner yields control of the content to somebody else who distributes it to anybody who wants it?
Is it pure genius or pure evil? Who cares? Just be thankful they're not your photos.
Pure evil? Thankful they're not mine? I was expecting some pr0n. Oh well. Hillarious none the less.
Unless this person is trying to get into the writing industry this is way to much effort.
Or this is just mental masterbation in a public forum.
It got on me via slashdot.
I hope I don't get a mentail desiese. I read this with out protection
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I'd Tell you all my secrets but I lie about my past
Everyone has their clothes on! That sucks!
Do you believe every blog is true?
No. There is no way to tell if this one is or is not true, and it doesn't matter. It's still just another rag on the net... nothing to see here, move along.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
This is...so evil...and amazingly funny...amazingly funny and evil...funnily evil and amazing.
/. though.
I am truly speechless. As wrong as it is, it is still so damn funny. Doesn't seem like those girls would be reading
One can dream, one can dream.
"There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter," Jeeves, (Jeeves and the Impending Doom)
If you read this comment, 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.)
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
... if some of the pics were nudeies!
bash: rtfm: command not found
"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)
Comparing posting pictures on the internet to stealing one's identity is kind of a stretch. One is blatently illegal, and as stated in parent, the legality of this is unknown.
:)
Even on an ethical level, many people post personal pictures on a website/blog, though I don't think they go around impersonating themselves or others.
Illegal? Probably not. Immoral? Maybe. A cruel or at least embarressing joke? Yes. Made me laugh
Well, it would be at least 200 violations of copyright for starters and depending on the location it could be a violation of privacy laws. But, then again, the USA doesn't have any privacy laws that protect normal people.
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.
/. 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.
This is one of the things that bugs me about
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.
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.
Thou I must admit I don't really care if pictures of me got out. What you'd see is a lot of work on speakers, trying to patch in outboard sound processing gear, altogether too many Behringer speakers, a boring office, and quite possibly me banging my head against walls when nobody tells me anything and changes up the program all the time. Yes, pro audio can be unfun sometimes :)
:)
Thou, with a class renunion coming up soon, I'm betting there are some pictures I won't want out real soon now
This sig left intentionally blank.
What are the legal issues? Can the blog continue? Does the blogger face any liabilities?
Who cares? He drives a Taxi. It's not the greatest income in the world. I doubt he has many assets worth trying to win in a judgement.
If I found a memory card and did the same thing, I'd probably claim I was in a low income position to avoid a lawsuit also.
The truth shall set you free!
I can't believe it, a group of posters who have less to offer humanity than your typical /. poster. Anyone who posts that much to a blog needs mental health.
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.
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.
Slashdot is proof that Sturgeon's Law applies to mankind.
This was left in a Taxi, and most Taxi companies have a disclaimer that they are not responcible for your stuff. Generally speaking, a good company has a lost and found, and will be nice enough to hold on to your goods for a set period of time, and then get rid of them. I don't see this as being a case of theft if the cab company took it upon them selfs to hold on to the stuff for the required period.
Now copyright infringement is a diffrent story, but that would be a civil matter not a criminal one. If they are making a profit from someone else's work, i.e. digital photographs, that would be a legit complaint. But theft, well that's far fetched.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
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.
If I'm seeking data, I'll go the local univerisity. If I'm seeking wisdom, I'll go the local truck stop
The medallions (license) they have to drive the taxi cab can cost close to a million dollars in some cities. They are next to impossible to get. So he does have something to lose.
And this does smell of something illegal... or in his best case scenareo, of something that will bring about a lawsuit where maybe he can claim stupidity and that there were no losses suffered by the plantiff.
Come and say hi. http://forum.penpals.com/index.php
Can those people be any whiter?
It is no longer there pictures. the pictures now belong to the person who found them.
Do I find it decent? no. It certianly is not criminal either.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
all those girls are fat, and those dorks are goofy looking. That one blond was the best looking of that bunch but nothing spectacular. I give the site a C-.
ok look at this picture. 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?
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.
It's funny because you don't know the person.
Information theory is life. The rest is just the KL divergence.
For those of you on OS X, there's a very nice client called NewsFire with a clever, clean, pretty interface. It's the first RSS viewer I've actually enjoyed using.
I've got more mod points and GMail invi
One of the comments posted on the blog identified this sorority as the source from another picture of one of the girls that was posted on their site.
Years ago at the Aspen Comedy Festival, I was using one of the communal Internet computers (all Macs in the room, that year) and found a floppy disk which happened to belong to Dave Chappelle. I learned this by checking the contents, which included notes on the bits he wanted to do on a forthcoming Leno appearance.
I can't remember why I didn't try harder to get it back to him, nor have I met him since, but I didn't publish the stuff anywhere. So... ho hum.
I think I get it now - it's only a good story if you blab to the world!
Perfectly Normal Industries
Personally, I hope they go to jail.
I think that's a little extreme, don't you? I mean, I remember when jail was for the murderers and rapists, not for the people who post other people's vacation pics on the internet... would that punishment really fit the crime (if a crime has been committed)? Come on now.
Here you go people.
First a picture from "I Found Some of Your Life"
Dianne
Now a picture from KappaDelta
Lindsey
That's basically the comment that got deleted.
And those are the same person!
awake since 7, angry since I met you
This website is so suspicious, it should have a CBS logo on it somewhere.
Jonathan B.
It's interesting that the explanation mentions that all the photos were taken over the space of EXACTLY one year and then left in the back of a taxi. Perhaps it was kind of a "message in a bottle" sorta thing. Think about it - surely if the real owner had a digital camera, he would have taken more than 227 photos and at least would have deleted the older ones. Just a thought...
Does this make my brain look big?
In preparation for opening a website lampooning politicians (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 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...
I for one think this whole thing is bullshit. I believe he actually does own the memory card and pretending to have nicked it. What kind of person has the time to play with someone elses memory card? If I found it, I'd just put all of them up at once in a web gallery for all to see. Why the silliness?
hence, "/rant" means "I'm done ranting"
Fark folks use it for any damned thing
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
i didn't see anywhere on the site that said he was the taxi driver, just that he found the card in the taxi. 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? come on now...
as for the medallions... they are hard to get and expensive in NYC.
please me, have no regrets.
this guy has definately too much .. bandwidth.
Only morons moderate based on a sig.
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.
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.
It is interesting that everyone here is gleefully talking about legality of copyright and how there probably is no real legal recourse for the victims.
For me, personally, it is a matter of personal integrity. I know that I do not have the permission of the photographer. It is still up to him to choose to give it or not. The fact that I do not have any means of discovering who the photographer really is does not matter. I don't have his permission and therefore I am honor bound not to post them in the blog we are talking about here.
You guys splitting legal hairs are missing the point. Everyone in this case is free to do as their conscience allows. If you are a decent person, you won't post these photos in a blog.
if they had naked picture of that person's wife or girlfriend. :)
Cyberbite Networks - Web Hosting, Dedicated Servers & Colocati
Actually, this is an amazingly brilliant ploy: You lose a memory card to your camera, some idiot picks it up and decides to post its content on the 'net, you find out, submit the story to Slashdot, and suddenly the perpetrator's bandwidth costs skyrocket and (maybe) the site goes down!
Alas, the bittersweet taste of vengeance.
He who has no
Does anyone else find it impossible to navigate this blog in sequential order from the beginning? Where the hell are the next/previous entry links? Am I missing something?
"Well, after four (4) posts, it is abundantly clear that this project is boring. In an attempt to remedy the situation, from here on in I am going to bring you only the most interesting pictures..."
So it sounds like the author gave up with the project. Oh well, it's still kind of interesting.
That kid better call a lawyer now.
If someone found someone's wallet and posted the info online they would get all hell for it.
This is the same thing, even worse if the pictures are embarassing....
Doesn't matter if you found it on the street, you could be setting yourself for hefty legal trouble.
GoatPigSheep, the 3 most important food groups
It's not really their pictures anymore, is it? ... "the photos are automatically copyright by the person who took them." not true ... losing the original is akin to giving them away.
Title 17 says copyright in a pictorial work comes into existence the moment the work is fixed in a tangible medium, it belongs to the author (in this case, the photographer), and finding the "original" copy doesn't give you any more rights in the work than finding any other copy.
Can you back up your position with statute or case law?
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.
"Thanks to the remote control I have the attention span of a gerbil."
The copyright on the pictures is owned by whoever took them. I'd imagine whoever posted them might owe the owner of the memory stick a few bucks. Hopefully that guy has a sense of humor.
paintball
"The good news is, Mike, we found your photos. The bad news is...."
Table-ized A.I.
Now run along and play, silly poster.
...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
Come on people, help me out. FreeIPods.com [freeipods.com]
The "greed" of the subjects of these photos is pure speculation on your part.
Your greed, however, is very evident. You're begging us to join in a pyramid scheme with your sig.
my password is private, but unchanged.
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.
This sig intentionally left justified.
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.
Table-ized A.I.
It's clear that the vast majority of the people in the pictures are posing for the pictures - i.e. they know their picture is being taken. 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.
paintball
Spending so much time and energy on someone else's life. Only someone without a life could have so much spare time.
This woman "Dianne" in the blog is found here from the Vanderbilt Kappa Delta site. Here name is...well, you can figure it out.
This post could be an attack on the above post, or a defence. Why not find out for yourself?
/. debate about property and transmission law.
I get particularly annoyed when I see heated discussions that involve nuances of law, when it is clear that most people talking don't have any CLUE about law. Here's a link to get you *inspired to search some more* before you keep discussing.
Hopefully this will inspire you all to search out the laws of your state/country and help keep the discussion based in fact. I am bowing out, because frankly, I don't want to enter into another ignorant
Be sure to check the laws that govern your country.
Do I support it because it's a good idea, or condemn it because it's Microsoft's idea?
Do I condemn this transgression on someone's privacy, or do I support it because there's a Tri-Delt being exploited?
paintball
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.
What have they lost?
Well, a memory card for one.
Uh, in my state it wouldn't be theft. Also, in a twisted sort of way, this would count as disclosure in other states (provided that he returns the card to its owner upon request).
Secondly, lets assume they are copywrited works. The blog is a parody of those pictures. Seems to me that it would constitue fair use of said pictures.
Its harmless fun. If you don't like it, don't visit it.
Just an observation from a neutral third party.
Check out Fusker. Especially the photos from Photobucket and Live Journal. Those are worth checking out.
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
Her email:
lindsey.a.herrel@vanderbilt.edu
I cant believe the slashdot crowd is making so many claims about copyright issues.
So the guy decides to use somebody elses photos as his joke? So what? Its not like they are compromising photos or anything. Its just some random pictures of random people with random funny things being said.
Who gives a shit if he makes fun of some forgetful fratboy?
Why do some people suggest the joker should go to jail? For what? Making me laugh by mocking a fratboys bland photos? Oh the humanity!
Jail is for murderers and rapists. Not "copyright violators".
Looking at the pictures I don't think I'd have a problem with them being posted - I know I've taken some personal pictures I wouldn't want on the net but for the most part I think I'd be okay with it ;)
Also the whole point of this is to get the pictures back to the people who they belong to, what better way than this?
-JP
Reminds me of "The Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players". From their web site:
It's a little weirder than it sounds.
You must be very young or perhaps not an American... Lookup "OJ Simpson murder trail" on google sometime. In USA, drug-dealers go to jail while criminals are punished in civil court with big fines.
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.
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
Distributing copyrighted works without permission, especially unpublished copyrighted works straight out of a camera, can result in severe statutory damages.
IANAL, but to the best of my knowledge, in the US, statutory damages only kick in if the works are registered with the government. Since these were found in a memory card, it's doubtful they are registered, so damages become only actual, and in this case I very much doubt that would be much above 0. The pictures are hardly professional quality.
This is not to say I think the guy posting this is doing anything ethical. He's not and it is wrong. Of course, maybe this card wasn't really lost by the owner...
What's with everyone screaming blue murder over copyright infringement! If this isn't fair use, then what is?
The blogger is doing the owner of the card a service, posting one pic a day, adding a narrative to get attention until enough eyeballs have seen the pix that the true owner is found.
This is like paparazzi in reverse. You take pictures of yourself then they get posted somewhere. Instead of someone else taking pictues of you and them getting posted.
Further study into the Kappa Delta site and photo leads to Lindsey Herrel, a.k.a "Dianne"
Google search yields the email address of a Lindsey Herrel (director of the Dance Marathon?) at Vanderbilt.
Trying to do a search through the University People Finder, but it's not going through...
A Google search of Herrels in Elgin, SC gives us an address and names of possible parents John and Mary. Pretty small community of 800+ so it's not likely there is another Herrel family in that particular city.
Search for John Herrel: works for Denali Partners (a company in North Carolina) as a managing partner. He graduated from the University of Cincinnati.
Imagine what *else* might be on the Goatse Man's memory card. Don't look, it's not worth it.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
And since you seem unwilling or unable to research it, how about you shut up? In the US, lost or unclaimed property needs to be returned to the rightful owner. If the rightful owner can't be contacted, it needs to be turned over to state's unclaimed property office.
In practice as an individual this means you need to give the item to either the entity in charge or, if in public the police. The legally (and morally) correct action in this case would be to give the card to the driver. The driver would then be obligated to give it to the company they worked for. The company would likely attempt to contact the owner if they could, and otherwise place the item with their lost and found department, hoping the owner called. If they didn't hear form the owner in a given amount of time, a month probably, it would be turned over ot the state.
Again, this is just a simple extension of the "Don't mess with what isn't yours" kindergarden level ethics.
A few months ago I found a bank card sitting in the ATM, which was franticly beeping trying to get the attention of the person that left it there. Now it seems that some have the logic that I should have been allowed to take it and do as I pleased. Er, no. I took it out and tried to locate the owner. As it happened, the card has a picture on it, and the owner wasn't far away. I got his attention and gave him his card. Had that failed, I would have taken it to lost an found on campus. They would then have tried to contact him, and handed it over to the state or the bank had that not been possible.
That's how it works. Property isn't up for grabs just because someone lost it, at least not the US. It still belongs to the person that lost it and you have a legal obligation, should you take possession of it, to try and return it or to hand it over to the authorities.
you can steal a car, or a book, or a bike... or a camera, to stay on topic
but the endless and effortless copying of electronic bits is not "stealing" in that you deprive someone of something that is there property, something solid, physical, made of atoms
now i'm not condoning kazaa, nor marching down the "information wants to be free, man" technoanarchist's tired rant
but what i am saying is that what you are talking about is not stealing at all, and it is most definitely NOT the same as the physical world
what it is is something entirely new and different, and atoms are not bits, and they are subject to different rules and interpretations
what are those rules?
i don't know, but neither should you pretend to know either
because all those people who say "it's very simple" are very wrong
it's not a simple problem, really, it's not, and our whole cultural and legal standards about online behavior with bits instead of atoms is something we're all just beginning to come to terms with, and it is very complex, and very new
anyone who says it is very simple, or says it is just like the physical world, just doesn't get it, at all, in a very fundamental way, and they are not helping the situation in the least with their stubborn brittle attitude that refuses to understand when something is very different and alien to traditional cultural and legal interpretations
now i am not saying what this guy who found the camera did does not have negative real world traditional legal and cultural implications, and he also has dubious online cyberbehavior problems as well
and music pirates and script kiddies are not helping the situation
but also this: your simplistic kneejerk unthinking attitude about online behavior isn't helping either, not in the least
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The young woman who supposedly drove in her motorcycle through Chernobil is a perfect example of the kind of hoax that you are reffering to. The story was intensly captivating and the Slashdot croud was mesmerized. I believe that a few hearts were broken when it turned out to be half fact and half fiction.
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...
ha cha cha cha cha cha!
That is the last time I'll every trust my proctologist again...
Regards,
Arthur Goatse.cx, Sr
Hey, just because I like my cute arse and you like
to see the shuttle fly through yours, we live in the
same universe.
What someone hasn't noticed is that for the poor person that has had part of their life on show it could get like a bad version of John Carpenter's nightmare visions.
You can't feel happy about this. Not ever. I could
tell you about a strange murder at an old peoples home and some things I've lived indirectly through but we guess that with a little luck you'll be able to stay complacent somewhere in Hicksville good old USA...
If you get to live long enough you'll see some really awful things. Even without wars. But please
god not on a monday morning!
(cue nice dancing disney animals or maybe not)
...losers weepers.
There was no name on the memory card--if there was a name the blogger would've returned it to him/her.
Furthermore he hasn't taken anything, he found it on a taxi chair. What, he's just going to leave it on the chair for someone else to take it? If the module was of such critical importance to begin with, the owner should've taken better measures to make sure it wasn't lost.
"Jordan" is a film major at UCLA. He met the rest of the cast there.
People here have already mentioned the copyright issues, but they've missed the biggest problem: the captioning of the images. Quite simply, you can be held legally liable for captioning a recognizable image of a person in a way that reflects badly on them. In fact, how the images are to be used and presented are a huge component of model releases-- if you photograph a model dressed up in like a tough guy, and wish to use the image with a caption saying something like "gang member", your model release better cover this use of the image.
Are you adequate?
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
San Francisco values: compassion, tolerance, respect, intelligence
hey man you bring anything to a police station and wait for 3 weeks REGARDLESS... it's your's try it out... camera's bags hats pants wife's ...it's all your's so a dude lost his memory card .... finder's keepers... if you didn't go out of your way to look for it ..tuff
Her tag says Lindsey. And the treasurer of Kappa-Delta is named Lindsey Herrel http://www.vanderbilt.edu/KappaDelta/. Apparently she is the organiser of the local dance maraton: http://www.vanderbilt.edu/dance_marathon/. Some slashdotters should go there and check it out for us.
These people are providing potentially objectionable captions to images of recognizable people that have not authorized such use of their image (through a model release). They may well be liable for defamatory use of these people's images.
Are you adequate?
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*
Winged Power Photography
You've got to be kidding me - talking about legal consequences??
/. reader points out, that this card is his, the poster would stop and return the card.
Here in Europe, NOBODY would think of that; and, also nobody with only one bit of human pride left would post pictures that would humiliate anyone on these pictures.
It's an ingenious idea, and fun I might add.
And I think, if some
You americans are really strange, sometimes.
-Proud to be an AC
Yes, I agree with that. Here in Scotland I know a guy with a PhD in theoretical physics who drives a cab simply because in this country there are not many opportunities for theoretical physicists.
There was also a big story in the news here recently about a geneticist who gave up his amazingly crappy paid research job to become a gas fitter, for double or treble the money. it is the same principle, I would imagine.
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 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? 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? 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.
I once found a camera filled with someones holiday pictures when I was on holiday on Gran Canaria. I put the pictures on a website about 9 months ago to see if I could find the original owner. No luck yet though... maybe I should make up some silly stories about them and post it to /. too...
Here's the page: http://home.worldonline.nl/~hharmsen/
I lost my digital camera in the parking lot of my former employer (a regional airline) a few months back. Like any other airline, once you drop or lose something in a public area, IT IS GONE! I honestly wish someone would post my pics SO I CAN SEE THEM AGAIN! There were a bunch I did not save to my computer yet. I know I will never see the camera again, it is long gone, but I would like my pics back.
Ironically, the day after I lost the camera, I found $80 on the ground in the airport. The camera itself was about $105, so I didn't walk away completely empty...
My pics are important to me, but not as important as a family I saw on TV recently. They were pleading to the public to help them find a digital camera that had been stolen from them which contained photos of the last days they spent with their terminally ill child who had passed away. The photos had not been saved to anything yet. I hope that someone came forward and didn't erase it, but unfortunately, these memories fade away fast and forever.
Are there no cameras out there that encrypt the images on the fly and require a passcode to view them ?
Maybe that could be a useful feature in the future to stop this kind of thing from happening..
Lets all apply for a seat in the Dance Marathon Committee
a crime in some countries (eg. France) when that someone did not agree
this guy may be happy not to be in france or he would have been procecuted
The world belongs to those who get up early. - I'm far from being the king of Earth then
In almost every picture, the guy is with a girl. I think the creator of ifoundsomeofyourlife must not have a girlfriend, so obviously seeing someone who in every single picture has a hot chick standing next to him, has made this webmaster hate.
Ya, that's more or less what I was thinking. It's easier to just shoot the photos yourself and come up with some BS about finding the card in a taxi.
Sadly, people are gullible and will fall for it. Personally, I'm not going to waste my time on his fiction...
N.
"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." - Charles de Gaulle
How does this differ from Found Magazine, 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.
---
Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)
Further, if the state in question has a law that says that the finder of lost property owns that property if not claimed, then that means any copyright to those photos, unless those photos were non-original, was likely transferred along with the physical card.
Odds are, there's no law being broken here, assuming the person did due diligence by turning it in to the police and waiting to see if someone claimed it. Otherwise, there could be all sorts of charges from copyright violation to theft... but I digress.
And of course, given that the web site is making up stories about the photos, odds are that the story about the card being found in a cab is equally made up. Just a hunch.
120 character sigs suck. Make it 250.
I have a Submission that has been pending for almost three months!
---- Take the Space Quiz!
... when they start posting the not-safe-for-work pictures.
It isn't being used as a compliation, each photo is being used individualy and has been modified (rescaled).
I know, it's late and I don't really care about this story. Perhaps I should sleep.
Yes the guy who found the card should attempt to find the real owner, what better way? ... The cabby wouldn't be able to find the person, ...
I don't know about how it works where he is from, but in my town, there's a good chance that you pay the cabbie with a credit card. Also, the card was probably lost the same day or the day before, so there is a chance that the cabbie could remember a face or an address.
"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."
Replied:
"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..."
Alternative:
The purpose of punishment is the hope that it will cause the individual to repent. Once they realise they have done wrong, they can take steps to make sure they don't do it again. If they never accept their wrong-doing, they cannot get better.
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.
It would be nice to be sure of anything the way some people are of everything.
Yeah because on your flash card im sure you'd have pics of you in bars with hot chicks.
The point is that what this person is doing is wrong.
Indeed. What amuses me a lot is that it is nonetheless the _only_ way the original owner of the stick can have a chance to get his photos back. If the blogger chose not to publish the photos, or to leave the stick in the taxi, the original owner would have never had a chance to get it back.
At least now he has one.
The legal system we have was made from richs and for richs, so with money everything is settled down and if you're poor you go to jail.
Whether or not it's legal is irrelavent. It violates someone as a person to post pictures of them for all the world to see without their permission. It's absurdly disrespectful.
Imagine if your mom decided to put up a public web-site and post all your embaressing pictures for the world to see. Complete with commentary.
That said, I imagine that these pictures weren't actually lost. Or this guy is just looking to be bared from carrying a camera if he ever gets invited to a party. If these aren't his pictures and didn't get persmission to post them from the people in them then he's just established that he's someone that can't be trusted with a camera. He's got no respect.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
Look at this picture:1 024/IMG_07 75.jpg
http://photos1.blogger.com/img/65/1386/
the girl on the left has a "I love Linux" button with 3 Tux.
So this guy finds the pictures, posts them on slashdot and it happens there are pictures of the only woman in the whole world with a Tux button. Yeaa, right...
Or Linux is really making progress on the desktop.
Besides, he says they are cute, and they are not, so he must know them, even probably dating (or hoping to) one of them.
Thanks for posting the direct links, didn't realize until after I posted that the blog admin had removed the comment. Now that's rather unsporting. (the rest of the convsersation is still interesting. Also, there's a mention of "Diane's" real name, Lindsey, in the comments still)
This may be different in America, but I'm pretty sure that if I found somebody else's property, I would be breaking the law if I just kept it, no matter what it was. And of course there are privacy issues in somebody holiday pictures as well.
Nonsense!
If this chip was really found in a taxi, the guy could have sent it to the company's lost and found for reclamation.
How do we know they didn't advertise for a lost card? Maybe these folks did everything in their power to get the card back. I can't remember which "Munsters" episode it was but you get to keep the money in the wallet if no one has claimed it after x number of weeks. All life's lessons can be learned from TV!
I found a 128MB Memory Stick in front of the Maritime Museum in San Francisco one year ago. The pictures show a wedding ceremony inside the maritime museum. I tried to contact someone from there via email to get the address from the person who had reserved the room. But I didn't get an answer. I still have the Memory Stick and the wedding pictures (!) which I want to send back, can anyone help me?
I do not know about anybody else, but in my book what this guy is doing is simply wrong.
Agreed. Just another sign that not called for invasion (of privacy in this case) gains in popularity.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
Hey Jack! The MPAA called, they said they want you to take your job back!
-- james
See, "James" ( Sept 15 post) is clearly a derivative of Darl McBride (see, e.g., his business card), so the blogger will soon be hauled into court and feel the Wrath of Caldera/SCO! $1B damages easily!
To me this is just another lesson on what the American life looks like. Those pictures on what people are writing about it. Reading on how Metlin "would sue this guy to kingdom come", is just another prove of the current American way.
>> Had I been going to bed earlier every night? Have I been sleeping later? Has Tyler been in charge longer and l
That's nice. You'd go to court, parade all your friends who showed up in those photos through the courtroom as well (in order to establish that they were your photos, even the ones you weren't in), then you'd have to show the judge something to prove that you actually lost the flash memory (which I'm pretty sure you didn't report the loss of to a local authority). Once you had established all these things, the fact that you took a picture of what appears to be a pot plant means that you're going to come under drug enforcement's kind and balanced view.
So, in essence, you'd have a pathetic case about nothing at that point, look like an ungrateful shit for not being happy about getting the pictures back, and the judge would probably find that you were wasting the court's time since you were not defamed. (Just a thought here, since you seem unable to form them on your own -- juries hate wasting their time, and if they think you are wasting their time, they will often rule against you.) Also, they'd press drug charges, just in case you happened to have some pot back at your apartment. Oh, sorry, I forgot -- this is about the principle of being an pathetic, law-obsessed jackass, as opposed to the principle of picking a battle worth winning.
That's nice, but your 'book' is apparently some edition of Grimm's Fairy Tales that includes something about a defamation lawyer. In reality, nobody cares about the case you might have, in the legal system or outside.
It seems you understand nothing about why people actually go to court (hint: damages occur). Why don't you sue your parents for failing to make sure you were educated?
No, the point is that you believe some magical legal entity provides something you call Justice. The reality is that the legal system provides something called Justice For A Price, and the price you'd pay for something like this would drastically outstrip any actual benefits, monetary or otherwise, you'd get from winning the case.
Which, unfortunately, unless you get a jury of extremely rabid law students on crack, you could not do with "He did something WRONG! I have ambiguous proof at best, but he DID!" Crying wins sympathy only if you can indicate something happened to you, and in this case, you can't prove shit.
I can't help but think that I've heard of a similar legal strategy recently. ("We have ambiguous proof at best, but THEY STOLE OUR CODE...!")
One Hour Photo the movie kind of thing
Of course, it is at least arguable that the blogger has adopted the strategy most likely to allow him/her to find and make contact with the owner of the card, so that it can be returned.
It's not that easy to get a 'lost property found' notice posted on the front page of Slashdot, but this guy has used an innovative method to manage it.
Yes. It ties up my fucking legal system, dipshit. Uncountable murders and assault trials and legal disputes over more than an imagined invasion of privacy will be backed up by the amount of time your waste of a case goes through trial, and it's detrimental to the entire goddamn world when trivial bullshit like this shows up in a courtroom. It takes up other people's fucking time and money and air and space, and it's undeserved that some trivial douchebag like yourself should be able to take up the time that are truly deserved by actual, useful human beings.
If you lost it, and you have no way to prove it, go cry to your mother and leave the rest of the goddamn world alone, like a decent child.
Oxymoron of the year? Hootersworld-yankathon-reading frat brothers would be 500 times more likely!
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
I hope the spammers don't read Slashdot.
and that is why myself and my nrother are the most sought adter freelance photographer's and videographers in my state.
we advertise that we do not STEAL your property as when you hire us, we transfer the copyrights to your event to you.
do we piss off every other photographer and videographer service in america? you bet. But I have more work than I can handle for an after hours money making hobby, an dwe are charging 20% more than everyone else.
I dont care about holding the copyright to buffy&stephan's wedding, but "releasing" it and advertising the fac tthat other companies will not is the best advertising I could EVER have.
hell my Video work is regularly broadcast on local news because I send them a DVPRO tape with an edited segment and a complete copyright release form filled out with the stipulation that I get full credit.
Am I hated by local video and photography businesses? yup! Because the only way they can compete with me is to do the same thing, and thay pisses them off.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
OMFG! What a loser!
> The reality is that the legal system provides something called Justice For A Price, and the price you'd pay for something like this would drastically outstrip any actual benefits, monetary or otherwise, you'd get from winning the case.
Right so far...
> Which, unfortunately, unless you get a jury of extremely rabid law students on crack, you could not do with "He did something WRONG! I have ambiguous proof at best, but he DID!" Crying wins sympathy only if you can indicate something happened to you, and in this case, you can't prove shit.
Except for the fact that the proof for it is not ambigious 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.
"It's no surprise that things are so screwed up: everyone that knows how to run a government is either driving taxicabs or cutting hair."
-- George Burns
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Real men don't keep backups, they lose them in a taxi and mirror them on the internet.
"breech"?
"parody clause"?
Please, since you obviously aren't very well-versed in copyright law, or english for that matter.. perhaps you should stop pretending that you are.
Nowhere else in the world would anybody have much chance of suing just because they left some photos lying around and someone made fun of them and their 'jesus is my homeboy' hat. In america, a couple of lawyers will get fat for a year. Truly the greatest nation on earth.
Yes, but surely you can only claim damages to the equivalent of the damage caused, correct me if I'm wrong.
In this case, that's only embarrasement really, since it wasn't the guy in the blog who stole the thing, it was the guy in the taxi who lost the thing... and that's assuming the guy even knows about all this, in which case there are none at all.
> and as stated in parent, the legality of this is unknown.
ANd parent was wrong, this is copyright infringement, and not legal.
What about those "drinkordie" guys who were distributing warez for free? They got sent up for several years.
I took their advice and drank ordie; it made me seriously ill.
Now I am going to sue them for inducing me to drink Ordie.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
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. Umm, can you actually sue someone to prison? I'm not from the US, but I haven't seen anything like it in any TV show... If you can't sue someone to prison (the kingdom come?), then that act should be for purely monetary reasons, so whose flawed thinking are you talking about? If it's illegal, shouldn't you go to the police instead of sueing, to get them into court? (Again, I'm from Sweden, so I've based all this on TV shows and slashdot/news-stories, and therefore is most probably wrong.)
'Ethical' when concerned with the happenings on the Internet sir is a very realtive realm.
... 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.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
227 days? Why only 227 days... Well THAT took 10 seconds to answer.
perl -e 'use DateTime; print DateTime->today->add( days => (227 - 34) )->strftime("%B %d") . "\n";'
April 01
If those pictures were mine I would be thankful for posting them on the web and for posting a link to them on Slashdot.
Would you really claim as yours a memory stick that includes a rather juicy photo of cannabis sativa being cultivated in a shower?
Considering that this is the first photo blogged, it's clear that the blogger knows that the owner has no leverage to pursue the matter legally.
IANAL, but I believe that without registering your copyright, you are only protected from others who might try to copyright your work and then sue you. By registering, you are protected against misuse.
234 comments so far, and nobody twigs?
Are you people all idiots? This site smells suspect , 10 seconds of investigation yields.
perl -e 'use DateTime; print DateTime->today->add( days => (227 - 34) )->strftime("%B %d") . "\n";'
April 01
don't pick up a penny if you see it on the street, that's theft, leave it there, the owner might come back for it.
You would bother picking up a 1 cent coin? Seriously?
I hate bronze coins; especially the UK 1p piece. The 1p is worthless (I'd guess it's worth less now than the old 0.5p piece was when that was phased out), and the 2p is ridiculously bulky for its present value.
I normally remove them from my pile of change, but taking the effort of that, *plus* sorting them into bags for the bank is barely worth it! I don't *want* the damn 1p change! Put it in a charity box, if it's worth their time dealing with them.
Anyway.... whilst I can't see Britain getting rid of the 1p/2p (next up, 5p is too large for a base coin, and to have a 2p without a 1p would be strange, even though the 1p is useless); the US situation is different, because 1 cent is worth about 0.55p.
In short.... why hasn't the US phased out 1 cent coins and settled on the 5 cent piece (nickel IIRC) as the lowest value coin?
And who on earth would seriously consider picking up American pennies?
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
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.
The idea of sending a person to prison is to give him an education, show him where he was wrong and make him an usefull contribution to society. Your view is plainly inhuman and wrong.
Oh, I see. "Taking someone else's property is wrong." This from the same crowd that considers sharing copyrighted material via P2P is okay? At least the person who lost the camera memory can now get those pictures back and were not trying to make a living off them.
It's fun to watch Slashdot be morally indignant about both sides of an issue. If there was some way to financially gain from having these pictures I think we would see a whole argument. Something along the lines of "Information should be free!"
That was unexpected.
Game... blouses.
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).
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
I recognize some of those shots.
They are in Nashville TN. At a Titins Game and at a club drinking before or after the game.
Oh my so close to home
Personally, I hope they go to jail.
You sir are what's wrong with this world. Here we have a person who is making a few mild sarcastic jokes about something he found, and you would deprive his freedom for it?
Why should you hope for anything? Have you been somehow injured by this? Do you know whether the person tried to track down the owner any other way? Are you the ultimate moral judge? Are you fucking Ayn Rand or some shit?
Is the person who lost the card really hurt by this? The card was lost, and presumably didn't have the owner's name and address scrawled on it in huge letters. Turning it over to the police would be stupid -- they aren't going to be able to do anything with it. The cab company, maybe -- it depends on the city.
I would say that posting the pictures on the internet is among the best ways to find the original owner. I mean, it's hit Slashdot, and it'll probably be on BoingBoing, Metafilter, and a bazillion other blogs and message boards within the week, if not sooner.
Maybe, but when it's not you, it sure is funny :-).
3 194/
http://www.freeipods.com/default.aspx?referer=915
Come on, in a world where 'Big Brother' can draw an audience and things like 'Hello' magazine is actually bought by anybody, not to mention Fox News - how should it NOT be newsworthy? it obviously ranks high above trivialities like hunger catastrophes, genocides and floods.
What if I go out and take pictures of somebody using MY camera and posting them all over the web. That isn't illegal, is is? It should have the same consequences for the "victim". Ofcourse it makes a big difference if the photos are taken in embarrasing situations, but the photos in the blog seemed to be quite innocent.
Why would somebody run a story like this?
If you think that's rather small, I really, really hope you don't have to find out in person how "small" you feel if this happens to you and someone else decides for you that 10 years in prison evens out the crime.
Yes the guy who found the card should attempt to find the real owner, what better way?
How about going through the proper channels, like the police? Some of you may not be aware, but in most places, the police also act as lost-and-found custodians--if you find a lost item, you turn it in, and they hold it for some period of time, during which the owner can go in and claim it. If the owner doesn't show up, then you can claim "finders keepers" and do things like this blog.
If this had been some kind of corporate "content," the guy who found and posted these pictures would already be in pre-trial detention and the skids for his trip to federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison would be being greased. But the amateur photographer's copyright isn't worth the paper the Draconian DMCA, et al. are written on.
CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.
Yes, one is deterrence. You hope that, by instituting undesirable consequences for a particular behavior, you'll discourage people from doing it. Another purpose is punishment -- to correct a single individual's behavior by imposing said consequences. Yet another purpose is to provide some relief for the victim, his/her family, and society at large. To put it another way, society exacts retribution in order to prevent vigilantism.
~~~
LOL :-)
Of course intelligence is neither necessary nor sufficient to govern or win office.
-chris
San Francisco values: compassion, tolerance, respect, intelligence
...Found Magazine.
In their first issue, they published an entire vacation journal from some woman's trip to Hawaii that was left on an airplane. It was fascinating, yet kind of disturbing.
The other notes and photos they have are kind of interesting and bizarre, too.
What?
Being late to the discussion, I didn't real every single comment, so I don't know how redundant I am, but as a counterbalance to all the guys talking about copyrights and privacy, I say it's MUCH more likely that someone took photos of their own and concocted a lost-and-found story to make ordinary pictures look more interesting.
I mean, what are the odds that 1) someone loses a memory card, and that 2) someone with compatible hardware to read it finds it, and that 3) the finder also happens to have an interest in blogging AND 4) doesn't care whether or not the owner of the photos minds having his privacy exposed to the Internet?
Of course I could be wrong, but I wager the odds are in favour of this story being pure, unadulterated smelly bullshit.
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...
The intent of the law is to set standards for behavior that we can all agree to. The law punishes those who violate those standards by making the violators give up something that is precious to them be it time, money, labor etc. At the same the law is intended to offer the transgressor a chance to reform, that is what jails were intended for, that is what community service is all about. Punishment has to fit the crime, there is no sense in going overboard. I don't think it matters how this blogger gets slapped on the wrists in court, it will never be an adequate punishment, people like this only find that funny. Sending him to jail would be overkill! Forcing him to make a public online apology where he reveals his identity to the publc would probably be an optimal punishment since it subjects him to an equal amount of humiliation. Failing that there is probably nothing that will make him or other equally tactless individuals think as quickly about repeating this stunt as a judge forcing this guy to give up a months pay for his fun. Having to go begging to the bank for a loan to pay off the fine/damages and then paying that loan off with interests will certainly make him wonder if the money had not been better spent on a vacation than an imbecilic plea for attention.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
A tiny flaw in your analysis:
the photo was taken in Amsterdam, Amsterdam in the Netherlands that is. Where it is usually not unlawful to grow dope.
thank you.
MOD PARENT UP! (always wanted to say that!)
Sig out of date
But closer to evil, IMO. To me, it seems mean to invade somebody's privacy like that.
But, I'm from a different era. Civility still existed when I was growing up. I can't seem to shake those antiquated ideas.
Is that link suppose to mean something?
In which ways do you think this blog is (or represents) identity theft? I find this analogy laughable, and would like an explanation.
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.
Now I'm rethinking my strategy. Maybe I should erase that information. I'd hate for someone to post my photos of my life AND my name!
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell
Amsterdam, is that a southern state? *confused*
This is quite similar to a situation I am currently in right now. Here in Toronto I walked into a local computer store (OTA if anyone cares) and was presented with the offer of a lifetime. A powerbook g4 for 750 dollars (Canadian). Needless to say, I snapped it up. The clerk gave me the login ID and the power cord, and I was on my way. At the time, I didn't bother to ask them why it was so cheap, but figured, as it was being sold by a store, it couldn't' be stolen...right? Well I got it home and reset the root password, and noticed there was a CD in the drive. "That's strange" I thought, most people would not leave a CD in there laptop if they were selling it...but whatever, I'm sure it must happen somtime...right? After about a week of puttering about I noticed that the drive was almost full. I searched for all the files on the Disk and was drop jawed. The previous owner had left many..MANY home made movies of himself with his boyfriend indulging in the love that that dare not speak its name...at least in the deep south. Not two deep mind you as I also found several dozen pictures of what appears to be the same guy in his native Mexico, just hangin about.... All this and no name.... Not in Entourage, his keychain, no where... I also discovered several dozen tourist style pictures of the gentlemen at various Toronto landmarks. As well as several working prototypes of what appeared to be adds for a service called "Uncensored Escorts" that this guy was involved in. As well as a mailing list of several hundred e-mail addresses, potential clients I supposed. I figured that this guy either was either (A) dumb as a bag of hammers for not deleting his (QUITE) personal, or (B) he didn't have time to delete them (ie, someone nicked it from the poor guy. I went back to OTA and asked them about it. They claimed that someone "turned it in". "Errr...ok !?!?!...." The guy then walked away... I briefly thought of registering www.lookwhatifoundonmyusedpowerbook.com, but I am sure there has to be a law against posting someones home made porno on the net without their permission. I now am torn, between my love for my new Powerbook, and the need to find this guy and find out if he is missing a computer. What would you do?!?
That being said, I think the term "punitive damages" describes what you're after. As determined by judge and/or jury, of course.
If you found it in a cab in NYC, it is yours to command and conquer. From the pictures it looks like the pictures are from some college guy in Amsterdam. He don't give 2 shites about it. Also he's from Texas what do you expect. He won't find it and won't even look for the pictures on the internet until a set of peple who saw it on that webshot and tells the real owner about it. Also the guy is a mess, he can't even take his crap out of a cab in NYC. What an idiot ....
Overall a great website and great pictures.
PS did you notice that most of the pictures had many many caucasian people in them, is that some sort of statement .... :)
I found a memory card once. I was on the beach in Mexico, and it was 100% empty. An hour later, this couple walks past... Back and forth, like they are looking for something. At the time I thought nothing of it. It was getting warm, so the female takes off her shirt and puts on her swim top (wish I had a camera). Hours later we leave, and what do I see in the rocks, looking like it has been beaten by the surf for years? An old Kodak DC-something or other. It is nasty, but I open the memory card slot - bingo, a CF card. It is at this point I put two and two together, it has to be this couple. Sadly I never saw them again. But I did take the card home. Well over 500 pictures, not just one year, but several years of pictures. All taken at medium res on a large capacity card - they had never erased a single picture. Pictures from several vacations, pictures at birthday parties, pictures of at least four different international trips. Pictures in clubs, pictures in cabs. While I would never post them on the web, I would love to be able to return them. I tried everything - zoom in on magazines that might have a name and address on the mailing label. No license plates, nothing that would allow me to identify an owner. The only thing I am sure of is that they live in Europe...
Why are people imprisoned?
For their correction?
To deter others? or
To help them learn new ways of relating?
These are philosophical questions, and the truth is that some people are going to fear prison and therefore will avoid illegal behavior. Others will endure punishment in prison, decide that this is not an acceptable way to live and therefore will obey the law out of coersion, and others may decide to take advantage of programs there to establish a new life history where they gain education and empathy.
There is a small part of the population which will be unable to comply with society's rules and therefore will need to be isolated from society for the good of society. Perhaps this is to the detriment of the individual, but as Spock says: "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few."
Of course we need compassionate concern for those in prison. The fact that many here joke about "federal pound-me-in-the-*** prison" is indicative of one problem we face with prisons in America.
However, establishment of the existence of a problem within a system is not the sole requirement for abolishment of that system.
Inhuman? Some people are quite inhuman, and quite unwilling to change. As such, they must be locked up, and as long as they maintain that attitude, they will not gain education, learn right from wrong, or be interested in anyone but themselves. How do you propose to deal with those people?
Respectfully,
Anomaly
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
did the invention of the gun change warfare?
did the discovery of penicillin change medicine?
did the invention of money change economics?
are you so daft that you cannot see that the internet has some changes in mind for how intellectual property law functions?
but, like i said, some people who insist the problem is simple, or that old rules apply and so there is no problem, don't understand the situation on a very fundamental level
so you go on with your bad self
because there is no convincing you, you are simply and utterly blind to the role of technology and how it changes human society
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The intent of law is to uphold traditional power structures, laws are simply tools for those that posess power.
Contrary to popular belief, laws were not invented in order to uphold justice, they were invented to uphold a unjust distribution of power.
My english is a bit rusty.
The idea of sending a person to prison is to give him an education, show him where he was wrong and make him an usefull contribution to society. Your view is plainly inhuman and wrong.
Shame that this so rarely happens and that the BEST education felons get are the tools/knowledge to do more crime!
'By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes'
I think you can find the answer you are looking for here.
a posting from the blog site...
/.ed I hope you have fun while it last.
4:22 AM
Anonymous said... you have been
This
Actually, I doubt it. The inquisition actually was there to reduce unjust punishment, not increase it as you seem to imply.
Not only has this person failed to do that, but what they're doing is a terrible invasion of privacy.
I hope someone reports this person to the police. Their behavior is outrageous and they should get the full 6 months in jail.
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/nycodes/c83/a6.htm l
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.
(nt)
"Mental anguish" is one of the most often sued for things, and one of the least frequently one. Its hard to proved your were "anguished" to the point of needing damages.
Libel, however, is a pretty easy case to win.
Mod point free since 2001
Um, how does the creator know that the original owner didn't LEAVE the pictures in a taxi to be discovered? Found art?
Philip Glass, the acclaimed composer, used to drive a cab in New York city.
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.
I've always wondered were the music guys ended up. I guess it's better then the food service job that my CS Degree landed me.
Yes, this one is real. I don't expect anyone to believe me nor will I offer additional proof, but it's genuine. No, I am not the author.
"Politicians find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the people."
Can a person claim copyright on all generated work if they don't actively claim copyright? I'm not saying that a person needs to file for copyright, but don't they at least need to label the media (C) #owner#? If all generated work is truly copyrighted, can I go after anyone who makes drawings like I did in grade school? I'm sure someone copied my stick figures by now.
As for the libel/slander due to the fake events, I didn't read through most of the "stories" to see if anything was that bad. Besides, the blog owner does state that he is making fictional events as he doesn't actually know the people.
The quality of the pictures is not the point, the theft and misuse of the pictures is.
Can this really be considered theft? This guy didn't aquire the media by depriving the owner of the object. The blog owner even provides an email address (don't know if it's valid or not) for the media owner to contact in order to return the media. Could this be the digital equivilent of the "Found Lost Dog" sign?
There is nothing technically innovative about posting some pictures in a fucking retarded blog. _What_ is the technical innovation there?
Now maybe if he was running Linux and Apache on a Dreamcast, with an ISCSI hard drive over the DC's broadband addapter (which is basically an Ethernet card), now _that_ would be technical innovation.
But "oh look, I can post pics on the net" stopped being new and original some 20 years ago. Any kiddie can just use pre-made software they don't even understand to get some text and pics on the net. Heck, nowadays you don't even need to know HTML to do that, as the software will do that for you.
So _all_ that is left is an asshole who thought it would be cool to (A) steal someone else's property, and (B) violate their privacy using the whole Internet as an audience.
And you know what? Even _if_ there was any technical innovation in there (but there isn't), there is no ammount of it which can justify the evil act. There are better way to showcase _any_ technical solution than raping someone's privacy.
And I'm not in the USA, and I too thought I'd sue the hell out of the fucktard.
Now _I_ wouldn't necessarily want his money. I'd just want him hurt so badly, people would cringe at the mere thought of such a stunt for the next 100 years. I'd want the asshole impaled and left there to bleed and die over several hours.
But since that's not an option, I'd probably sue for such a sum that he'd never see the end of the tunnel for the rest of his life. Then donate the money to some charity. Because, as I've said, I don't want his money, I just want him in a world of hurt.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Imagine in Soviet Russia, a beowulf of digital photos publish YOU, you insensitive clod!
Because in civil matters, you can only sue for money. You have to have criminal. You can seek an injunction as part of the proceedings, and a cease and desists orders can exist as part of the judgment, but in civil law, you can only sue for compensation.
Mod point free since 2001
Another justificaiton for incarceration is indeed the sense of justice derived by the victim and society in general, not merely "make HIM feel bad and pay for his crime."
To the first part, yup. I don't need to actually do anything for me to have copyright over things I create. Registering with the government helps, but thats just 1) makes lawsuits go more smoothly and 2) is used to help determine when something was created, when there's a conflict between more than one possible creator.
And no, its not theft unless s/he refuses to return a found item, which it doesn't sound like is the case.
Mod point free since 2001
Seeing as a london cabbie once won mastermind, i'd say there are some very intelligent ones out there
NO ONE exp...ah, nevermind
Is that link suppose to mean something?
Yeah, it means the post was a troll, and the lazy mods who didn't bother to click the link bought it hook, line, and sinker.
Informative my ass.
Drug dealers should go to jail.
Perhaps you meant drug users?
Who really should get some treatment for their addiction.
I hope he doesnt have any pictures of children under 13 If so he is royally screwed. You're not allowed to put pics of children under 13 online without parental consent, And your not even supposed to put pics of people over 13 online without asking them.
IANAL
Found this site LawGuru Copyright defined.
Excerpt:
13.- 7. Requisites after the grant. No person shall be entitled to the benefitof this act, unless he shall give information of copyright being secured,by-causing to be inserted, in the several copies of each and every editionpublished during the term secured, on the title page, or the page immediatelyfollowing, if it be a book, or, if a map, chart, musical composition, print,cut, or engraving, by causing to be impressed on the face thereof, or ifa volume of maps, charts, music or engravings, upon the title or frontispicethereof, the following words, viz: " Entered according to act of congress,in the year by A. B., in the clerk"s office of the district court of ___________________"(as the case may be.)
The owner of the media likely did not insert any copyright notice into the media (either by labeling the media or posting in the media contents). I'm not sure that copyright applies here. Now going to a personal example, my church has Ollan Mills (photo company) take family photos for the church directory. The company also offers the photos for sale to the family. When looking at past photos before deciding to make a purchase, I asked if I could get the photo without a little overlay of the Ollan Mills logo. The photographer said that I couldn't have the photo without that mark as they copyright all their photos by including the logo (which does include a (C)).
I guess I'm not convinced that the media owner really has a copyright on the material if they never showed intention to copyright.
I can't even see being mad, wanting the blog taken down, or wanting an apology. This is not even close to identity theft... the blogger is not seriously claiming to be the guy. He has no idea who the guy is!
IMO, this is a totally harmless, victim-less gag. In fact, the only way the guy could ever get his memory stick back is for somebody to post the pictures, somehow make the site famous, and wait.
If the photos were compromising in any way, I could see being mad... but so far, this is just a hillarious, novel work of art.
I don't think it's so much that they think they deserve money, but that's the only thing the courts can deal with. It's not like you can sue to get your dignity back.
It's too late for whoever shot these photos, but there's an option in the PC software that comes with the Canons to set the owner name and shoot that back down a USB connection to the camera. Mine has my name and phone number set, so that information ends up in the EXIF data for each shot.
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
Mod point free since 2001
13.- 7. Requisites after the grant. No person shall be entitled to the benefitof this act, unless he shall give information of copyright being secured,by-causing to be inserted, in the several copies of each and every editionpublished during the term secured, on the title page, or the page immediatelyfollowing, if it be a book, or, if a map, chart, musical composition, print,cut, or engraving, by causing to be impressed on the face thereof, or ifa volume of maps, charts, music or engravings, upon the title or frontispicethereof, the following words, viz: " Entered according to act of congress,in the year by A. B., in the clerk"s office of the district court of ___________________"(as the case may be.)
This was supersceded by the Berne Convention; declaring copyright is no long necessary.
IANALBIPOOSD
I hate grammar Nazi's.
Music Theory has been worthless ever since Bach's Cathedral was built!
I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
there is a difference between engaging in a discussion or argument with someone who has a different opinion than you, and yelling at a wall
what we have here is the sort of conflict that arises when one party is unable to, or refuses to see a rather simple point
if two parties cannot agree on the basic, simple, fundamental premises of a discussion, what kind of discussion can be had?
in which case, you can only jump up and down and shout, because there is no further conversation that can be had if the other party refuses to concede a very fundamental, diverging point of fact which is pretty basic to the discussion at hand
so, again: you are daft!
you refuse to see that radically new technology fundamentally alters human society
the internet is such technology
intellectual property law is in for some mighty fundamental changes
that's really it in a nutshell
but you just can't see that, so we diverge at that point, and any conversation past that point is fruitless
i guess you are like the guy who laughed at the idea of fedex in '60s, or laughed at the idea of bottled water in the '70s, or laugh at the idea of spending $5.00 on a cup of coffee in the '90s
you are akin to the general who calls the gun poppycock, that the age-old rules of battle will never change, and marches his men with swords in battle against against gattling guns
i find that such brittle characters as yourself are also often deeply offended at lapses of decorum, such as the umbrage you take at me calling you daft... this character trait follows obviously and logically, considering your inability to conceive of any challenge to your pov: you are likewise unable to conceive of any challenge to your faculties- a more intellectually supple person would laugh me off or dismiss me or debate me at the poin tat which we diverge in opinion, but you instead protest like a victorian era nincompoop, an era that was the very height of ossified behavior and rigid thinking
i'm sorry, BUT YOU ARE DAFT! PLAIN AND SIMPLE!
there are immoveable, blind stubborn fools in every age, consider yourself one of them: you refuse to acknowledge, consider, or identify a fundamental challenge to the status quo, and so you marry yourself to a dying age, and dismiss anyone who challenges your deeply-seated, and soon to be extinct, pov
you refuse to concede or recognize the simple straightforward challenge the internet poses to ip law
fiddling while rome burns
so there is no conversation possible with you, only shouting at a blind, deaf, and dumb person
so, again: YOU ARE BLOODY DAFT!
WAKE UP!
HELLO????!!!!
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Ah, yes. Since all of /. is one mind and not somehow a collection of many minds that somehow all think independently of one another.
Go back to the playpen, Baby.
Amendment is spelled "amendment," not "ammendment." Please correct sig, in order to better make your statement.
That's the real message, that no matter how 'interesting' and 'clever' and whatnot your idea is, the execution of it is trite, banal and boring. Just like everyone's pathetic life.
One more fat interchangeable guy with a backwards hat and someone gets neckchopped.
if you look, he didn't post one picture per day to cover the 35 pictures per day already up... There were a bunch of stuff in the beginning of august flirting with doing just a top ten, with a few pictures unnumbered... and it jumps from sept 9 to august 30.
So maybe the person got the idea to make it an april fools day joke after already starting the blog?
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Those guys don't look like social phobics to me.
Of course intelligence is neither necessary nor sufficient to govern or win office.
Perhaps, but I think the quote was refering to the fact that the skills needed to win an office are no longer heavily correlated to the skills needed to govern in a praticipatory form of government.
Well, might as well do the same thing, so here are the pictures.
i'm not talking about the same thing you are
;-P
;-)
it really is like talking to a wall
and it's rather interesting to whine about name calling, and then call me a child
where i'm from that's hypocrisy
notice i didn't call you a name, i merely described a behavior, and gave it a definition
but you go ahead and dismiss me, after all, i'm just a child, i couldn't possibly represent a threat to anything you say
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Anyone want to email her the fact that her life is now on the internet?
lindsey.a.herrel@vanderbilt.edu
We've got Godwin's Law. Would this by Python's Law?
I seems the one who "would sue this guy to kingdom come" is quite an antisocial asshole as well.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
Did you look at the page?
Once you understood what it was all about, did you look at some more of the photos?
I will accept moralizing only from those of you who refused to look at the page out odf respect for these people's privacy. Everyone else is a voyeur like the rest of us.
This incident creates a great opportunity for a big legal case.
Here is the quick (and quite possible incomplete) list who you could and probably should sue.
It would make this post way too long to explain the basis of claim for each item, a competetent lawyer will be more than happy to do it for you, since man, this case is BIG!!!
1) All the companies who own the places where you took the pictures
2) Every single person you can identify on the pictures
3) The cab driver
4) The cab company
5) The car manufacturer of the cab
6) The city
7) The State
8) The Feds
9) The manufacturer of your camera
10) The manufacturer of your storing device
11) The manufacturer of the batteries in your camera
12) All the schools you ever attended
13) All the teachers ever taught you
14) Slashdot
15) Yourself (so that you could have a tax write-off for all the earnings from all the above mentioned law suits.)
Woah!
The first photo is a house boat in Amsterdam where I spent 3 nights with 4 friends and a serious amount of...um... alcohol back in May 2000. Its comes complete with TV and Stereo... and just to show the we are antisocial Australians we played Cold Chisel at full pelt everytime a tour boat went past and peer in our windows... which was about 18 hours a day.
Thanks to the blogger for the trip down memory lane!
Norman Cook's Ode to Sl
the future does not belong to those who never break any rules
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Registration is the only way to collect punitive damages, but even without registration statutory damages apply.
No, I'm not a lawyer, but I think I'm pretty well informed on this subject.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
Slander/libel can not apply unless the person making the comments holds them out to be fact - not the case here.
(IAALS)
OK, so maybe Joe Sixpack not having a release form for taking your picture isn't worth that much. But, if it is published, anywhere, even on the web, you certainly have rights. This is what nails a lot of "paparizzi" photographers - not having a release for someone that isn't really a "public figure".
Nevermind copyright here for a minute, there's the moral issue of privacy.
I hope he blurs recognizable faces. If I happen to be in the Federal Witness Relocation Program the last thing I need is my face with a recognizable skyline in the background. Ditto if I was in hiding from an ex-spouse or other violent former aquaintance.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
You don't know jack shit about photography and model releases. From Dan Heller's book Profitable Photography in the Digital Age: The people pictured did not give the blogger permission to post their images as part of a fictional story on the web. Nor did they approve the captions that appear under their photos. Without a model release, the blogger risks lawsuits that he is likely to lose.
Still feeling frisky?
I was vaguely amused when I typed it, but that how it is legally. I suppose you could have something in your will, or one of your heirs could do it.
Mod point free since 2001
I have a feling that her mailbox is allready full :)
I go to school there (Vanderbilt). The dance marathon is actually a legitimate charity event that a fairly good number of people actually go to. I showed these pictures to one of my roommates and he actually knows some of the guys. I wonder if I added a link of this site in my instant messaging profile if the owner would soon find out about it due to a small number of degrees of separation... hmm.... Or if it was a farce, he'd get even more publicity from students here.
That should have been "Your restraining orders..." I changed the sentence from "You're telling me" and missed that edit until after I hit "submit."
Probably depends on the arrangements for taking the photos. I'm sure the photographer did the work at no charge (or minimal) to the church in hopes of making up the cost by sales directly to the church members.
But wait. Isn't this a parody, and thus covered under fair-use?
Well then I am certainly glad we have laws to put violent people who can't control themselves behind bars when they take the law into their own hands.
Your desire to see someone suffer for ANY reason does not give you any right to hand out justice at the sweet spot of a baseball bat.
I don't know what a GBH is (greaseball head lock?), but I don't need to. Whatever it is, it is the job of the state to hand out punishment, not you. I really hope you don't have to find out just how little sympathy vigilantis get.
TRhe simple fact is we are tlaking about the pretty harmless posting of some damned innocuous photos.
Big deal. Get over it. Its not like theres been anything identifying in there. He couldn't return it to the owner if he wanted to.
Hell for all you know, he took the photos himself and is making a plea for attention. Whatever, get over it.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
What if I go out and take pictures of somebody using MY camera and posting them all over the web. That isn't illegal, is is?
Apparently, its legality hasn't been challenged in court yet. A Google search brought up this page about model release forms, and why they are required. It discusses the legalities surrounding photography. Here are excerpts...
In the case of this story, the person posting the photographs on the web wasn't in them, didn't take them, didn't own them, or have any rights associated to them whatsoever.
Taking != Sharing
(Not to say that one of them is right or anything, even though downloading music from P2P is legal here in Canada.)
The purpose of punishment is the hope that it will cause the individual to repent.
If the society already punished me, we are even. No sense for me to further punish myself by feeling regret or contemplating if I committed any wrong-doings. On the other hand, if society treats me well and at the same time educates me about real and potential consequences of what I did... wow!
As it is, people might be deterred from crime by fear of repeated/increased punishment. But most just learn not to get caught or at least think they did. Radar detectors, here I come!
Sounds to me like he found it.
I'll forgoe the obvious and not call you the same thing you called the uptight guy who started the legal rant.
My Linux Command of the Day site : LCOD
That is the dumbest site ever. And it made it onto slashdot. This, my friends, is the beginning of the end.
I don't think you can legally parody something which is unknown. There's no public work here of which to make fun. These were private photos, and as far as we know they were never meant to become public.
Oh yeah, I forgot about that. But still, lawyers can inflate actual damages, especially with respect to the rights of privacy and publicity.
Does anyone remember a web page that had a transcribed found diary of a homeless young woman. Basically the story went that she would shoplift liquor from various stores and sell it on the street. I believe the last entry of the diary was a note that said "don't mess with a pregnant woman's stuff."
I think it used to reside at this URL http://whatisthematrix.warnerbros.com/~sherrod/dia ry.html which is 404 now.
I know *someone* has to have a mirrored copy
If you found someone's wallet with their driver's license, you'd have a name and address to send it back to. I don't imagine most people have "If lost mail to..." with an address on their memory cards.
But this blog might just generate enough buzz to get word to the owner...and make it possible to return the media. As long as the blogger takes the pictures down if/when the owner asks, and keeps it clean, I see very little REAL harm here. This isn't exactly the high road, but the finder could have just wiped the pictures and used the media for himself/herself and never considered this person's photos.
As for the owner, if they have ANY sense of humor they'd get over the inital angry shock pretty quick and laugh along. You really can't just turn to the courts every time you end up as the butt of a joke.
That didn't take long!
Well now he has removed all the comments :)
I read Dan Heller's site, which was linked in another post to this article.
/. for legal advice.
http://www.danheller.com/model-release.html
There, it is stated that the amount of damages, in the case where YOU took the photograph, is comparable to the amount you sold the photo for.
That could be $200 or so. The person who sues you may pay $800 or so in legal fees.
The amount of damages is comparable to the commercial value of the photo.
That is hardly big trouble. By the time you are getting published in Time magazine,
you know what you are doing and hardly need to go to
You may, however, want to get a release for ethical reasons.
"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." -- Albert Einstein
Most of the comments I've read seem pretty negative in nature. Looking at all the bad parts of this situation. Privacy has a context. It is, something that you don't want other people to know. Why do things that you should feel the need to hide from public view? It just comes down to an attention factor after that. A seemingly unimportant event normally, gains great publicity. Was it really the event that was the problem, or the publicity it received. If you believe there is a God, everything is seen. If you don't believe in a God, everything can be found out.
Some of the most intelligent people I've met drive cabs. One of my favourites was a mortician who was taking a year off after seeing one to many dead bodies with bits missing (brains hanging out, yummy stuff like that).
Just because they drive a cab it doesn't make them stupid.
Like the rest of us, he probably hasn't insured them unless he happens to take pix for a living--so the value probably comes out to the cost of the memory card and possibly a few hundred for incidentals.
The key difference between a Programmer and a Senior Programmer is that one of them is Mexican.
hehe
i don't know the owner of the digital camera, but i do know several of the people in the pictures. "Diane" and the other parties involved have known about this for several weeks and find it very funny. The owner may have already contacted the author, but as long as the story lines don't become too negative, no action is going to be taken to stop it. All the legal speak is moot.
don't let Daryl see those. he might sue for copyrigh tinfringement
while that may be the theory you have to convince a court that your story is the truth which may be easier said than done
registration from the start should give you a more convincing case than registering just to sue
looks like it's been /.ed enough to get comments shut off.
...I'd love to see more pics of Sheri!!!!
VASIMR to Mars!
It makes it hard to use the CF card, but ain't nobody gonna steal it from me.
Please stop stalking me, bro.
Editor's Note
Hi. No new posts until further notice.
If you know things: ifsoyl at gmail.com.
posted by jordan | 1:57 PM
-+-+-+-
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.
Posted on "I Found Some of Your Life" at 1:57EST": Hi. No new posts until further notice. If you know things: ifsoyl at gmail.com. Bummer.
The Trachtenburg family slideshow players at
http://www.slideshowplayers.com/
They make music to go along with found photos and are pretty entertaining as a live performance. I believe they are sometimes given them and sometimes they are discarded but most of the photos are found. It probably says somewhere on the site but I've got work to do.
Publishing copyrighted material is not purely and simply illegal. The original text that accompanies the photos might qualify the whole site as a parody of the photos, making their use completely legal. Leaving the flash card in a public place where anybody could get at it might nullify a claim of privacy violation. Courts have already ruled that your garbage is public property, and a lost flash card can't be distinguished from a discarded one.
It would be nice if the "pure and simple" point of view worked more often in our complex world, but it seldom does.
You:
The blonde woman with at least 2 tattoos, one on your lower back and one on your stomach. You allowed your boyfriend to use his cell phone camera to take many seductive photos and videos of you and him engaged in various sex acts. How did he get you to pose naked with the new rims he bought for his civic? I'm willing to bet that when he showed his buddies those pictures, this enraged you enough to smash his cell phone on the ground, shattering it to pieces.
Me:
The one who found the smashed cell phone near Armitage and Western and picked up the flash card full of images and videos.
Don't worry baby, I'll treat you right. I don't even own a cell phone.
it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests
this is in or around Bucktown
gears? we don't need no stinking gears
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.
I agree that it was not a nice thing to do, but I want to comment the other part of your post.
Some of you seem to think "I'll sue you" is a devastating threat.
Maybe in the USA, but in my part of the world, you have to sue and WIN.
If you don't, you pay the other guy's legal costs, and look like an idiot.
I can't see any grounds for legal action in this case,but maybe I'm wrong. Please enlighten me.
Cheers,
Carlos Cesar
There is a Volvo 940 in a couple of the pictures. It doesn't seem to have a badge on the back of the trunk lid. My UK 1994 Volvo 940s turbo does have badging on the trunk lid. Is this a US thing?
aedan
Isn't privacy a fundamental right?
No, it isn't. Is it? What institute, body, or power exists to uphold this right? Who bestowed this right? In my country (U.S.), we have "certain inalienable rights" "endowed by [our] Creator", and "among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," but I don't recall a U.S. Constitutionally-guaranteed right to privacy.
Not trolling, just wondering where a right to privacy would come from, if such does exist.
NOBODY expects the Slashdot Inquisition! Our chief weapon is trolls...trolls and open source...open source and trolls.... Our two weapons are trolls and open source...and repeated articles.... Our *three* weapons are trolls, open source, and repeated articles...and an almost fanatical devotion to Linux.... Our *four*...no... *Amongst* our weapons.... Amongst our weaponry...are such elements as trolls, open source.... I'll come in again.
...and that's all there is to it.
I am dismayed at the number of /.'s that can't see that this is just wrong.
Forget all the legalese about this, it is just wrong.
Just one more plug for the Dance Marathon - - it is a great program that does a lot to help sick kids in need.
"Creativity is allowing ones self to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep" - Scott Adams
"If they weren't crude about it."
That is the whole point. As soon as someone takes it upon themselves to publish your work, annotated, or whatever, you can't control what they are doing.
That is what copyright is all about, controling the use of your information. When someone steals your work, you have lost something very real: Control.
In this case, he is taking very innocuous pictures of a party, and turning them into a soap opera with possibly very bad outcome, or in poor taste.
No, it isn't. Is it? What institute, body, or power exists to uphold this right? Who bestowed this right?
This is a quote from the ACLU site...
And I found this link that says Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis made the following declaration in 1928...
I presume that even though it isn't stated straighforwardly, the combination of laws as interpreted by the courts gives the right to privacy.
Well, that's you. Other people might feel quite differently. That's why the ethical thing to do is ask permission. The guy posting this doesn't know whether the person would approve, and since he is proceeding anyway, it's clear he doesn't care.
So, how you treat someone you don't know (when you don't stand to gain anything by treating them well) is an excellent indicator of your character. What kind of character do you think this guy has?
Something like this can indeed cause mental suffering. Have you ever heard of social phobia? 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.
I agree with most of your points with regards to the privacy issues; however, I sincerely doubt any of these people suffer from a social phobia, considering that they appear to be extremely active, social people in the Greek system. Have you ever heard of someone with these disorders attending college football games with over 40,000 people surrounding them? IMO, this is one of the most hilarious blogs I've come across. I give props to the genius who started it--I've been laughing hard all day, and my Wall Street colleagues have been shooting me angry looks because of it.
Well, it's not pure evil or pure genius.
Just sort of fair-to-middlin'.
if I put up information, correct or incorrect, and wish to remove said information, I would rather it be gone for good and not hanging around in a cache somewhere
Yeah. Just like in the real world, where when you say something about someone or something else, then at a later date wish you *hadn't* said it, you can just turn back time and make it so that you never did.
Oh wait... thats impossible.
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.
How do you figure this is identity theft? Is the poster claiming to be the actual photographer?
From the website:
Further, in an attempt to present this pictorial information in a more personal manner, and also to better allow for some artistic license, I am going to pretend that I am the owner of the camera. I'll call me Jordan, because that's the name on my birthday cake (you'll see).
(emphasis added)
The author of a fiction book written in the first person is not CLAIMING to be that particular character; the author is PRETENDING to be that character for the purpose of telling a story. The difference between making claims of reality and make-believe are quite clear. The blogger from the very start made it clear that they were writing a story, not making a claim of reality.
Government's idea of a balanced budget: take money from the right pocket to balance...oh who am I kidding?
I, sir/madam, am deeply offended with your use of my handle. Now, what's your name and address so I can sue you? :)
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
See, this meta-drama *is* getting interesting. :)
Man! Why didn't this get posted two weeks ago?
The site appears to have been removed in the last 5 minutes.
This can lead to slander/libel cases
Cannot not just as easily be classified as satire? Some of those comments were kinda funny.
In trying to find a funny comment, I find that the blog has been taken down. No word if the owners photos came forward or not....
7:11 PM - the site has disappeared.
Three Squirrels
Maybe you should explain that to the lawyers, who are only too happy to sue for extraordinary amounts that they know the person can't pay.
And the l33t shall inherit the 34r7h.
You can't sue someone to prison. However, you can sue over rights and priveleges. In this case, that means suing them to force them to take down the blog, hand over the original memory stick, and give up any other copies of the images they have control over. And maybe make a public apology. If I was the guy who lost the stick, I'd sue to shut down the blog, even if I wouldn't get any money out of the suit. More likely, I'd threaten to sue and the guy with the blog would be smart enough to take it down instead of hiring a lawyer and trying to defend against a suit.
"the kingdom come" has nothing to do with prison. "Suing till the kingdom come" is an old-fashioned figure of speech which literally means "Suing and suing continuously until the arrival of the Judgment Day predicted in the Bible, at which time God himself will descend upon the Earth and cause such drastic changes that it will no longer be possible to sue, as Earthly governments will be no more" Even if you don't believe in judgment day or know what "till the kingdom come" means, it sounds cool, so people keep saying it.
That's why there's separate systems for criminal and civil cases, dipshit. If you weren't so fucking retarded, like a diseased ape, you'd realize that there's two seperate waiting lists. Suing over this is only going to back up other civil cases, not murders and assaults. In addition, it's the court's job to decide whether a suit is trivial or not. They'll throw it out in five minutes if the judge doesn't take it seriously. Is that too difficult for your shriveled little brain to comprehend?
And he can prove he lost it, you brain-dead sack of turds. The blog contains a written confession from the offender. Are you completely illiterate?
So in summary, shut the fuck up and go away.
You're the one who's full of bullshit. None of the parent posts mentioned anything about money. You're just going offtopic and calling people greedy bastards when nobody involved is doing or saying anything related to money. Except maybe the guy who said that lawsuits would be expensive (because hiring a lawyer to defend against a suit is expensive, even if the suit isn't for monetary damages).
If the property is found in a public area or in a commercial establishment, then the "lost and found" is probably the best idea unless the property is of extremely limited value i.e. a single coin. There is a lot of talk about the idea of "finders, keepers" concerning lost property. However, this does not apply if the owner can be easily determined or if the owner is immediately identified i.e. the property has their name on it. In addition, property that is worth more than a certain value should probably be turned over to the police station. The exact threshold for "a certain value" likely varies from one individual to another.
Imagine realizing that you had accidently missplaced a memory card containing photos. What would you want the finder to do?
Looks like he either...
A: Found the person
B: Was handed a law-suit.
In either event....game over.
My
Work-for-hire isn't the same thing as just being hired to do something. Its a technical term for a specific contractual situation. The way normal hiring situations work, you hire me to take pictures some pictures, I take some pictures, I give you a proof sheet, you tell me which pictures you like, I sell you copies of those pictures. Nowhere in there do I (the photographer) lose exclusive copyright of those pictures, unless its specifically part of (a the payment to get me there or b) with transfer of the individual pictures you bought.
Mod point free since 2001
I got home hoping to share this with my son only to find it evaporated.
Anyone have links to mirrors? I guess I can reconstruct it from my cache but I'm lazy...
(This sig intentionally left blank)
Below is the text of the site as it appears to me on dialup (!) before it forwards to a blank page (I can hit stop plenty fast enough here, even running Firefox...).
So, would this be a "pre-emptive" shashdotting?
Monday, September 20, 2004
That's It
Sorry folks.
Contact: ifsoyl at gmail.com
[Thank you for all of the emails. I took the site down pre-emptively. I have not yet heard from the owner of the card. I will try to let you know.
Let me be very clear that I never intended to hurt or embarrass anyone. While I understand that this is a somewhat naive position to maintain, you must understand that the scope of this project grew far beyond my expectations in a very short period of time.
That having been said, I would like to formally apologize to all of those who were unknowingly involved.
Finally - yes, the celebrity was Vanilla Ice.]
posted by jordan | 7:11 PM
Tag lost or not installed.
Well, the blog, whether for better or worse, has now officially ended. It was at the least a thought provoking look at personal privacy and copyright in the ever growing digital world.
yeah... i dont think YOU could actually do it at life+70, you'd be dead.
Correction:
It is not "taking another's property" when you find it in an obviously and unrecoverably lost state. It is called *finding*
The original owner would never have seen these photos again. The blogger actually *assisted* in the return of the photos. There were no other means of finding the original owner. What if the owner was really heartbroken over losing the snapshots -- captured moments from his life? Copyright or not, it's not worth anything if the original owner lost the only copies.
How could the blogger know if the owner did not wish for the photos to be shared and distributed? It's not like there was any way to find out... the original owner was bereft of the originals through their own negligence, without any possible way of reconcilliation.
Now, if there were lude/nude/embarrassing shots, of course the blogger should be cautious, but barring that, I'd personally be happier to find those lost moment-imprints from my life than care that they were shared.
Sue Sue Sue. Too many morons sue for whatever the reasons. Just deal with the fact that this isn't a perfect world and most things are our own fault.
Recommendation: If you don't want your stuff used by someone else, don't lose it.
The correct action upon proof of ownership, however, would be to comply with the owners request regarding use of the material.
But seriously. How can you know what the desires of a lost owner would be? To find or keep private. This blogger took a chance, and provided thousands with entertainment in the process. I would be fine with my lost pictures being handles thusly, so long as the blogger acted respectfully.
Do you realize the percental chance of actually reuniting these pictures with their owner after a loss in a taxi cab??!?!
This was an amazingly sadistic methode of doing something creative to get the pictures back to their owner. I would love to find lost photos in such a way. It is also a great eye opener to how somoene else will interprit your photo library.
Anyone who cannot sit back and appreciate this site shouldnt be on the net in the first place.
From Dan Heller's book Profitable Photography in the Digital Age:The people pictured did not give the blogger permission to post their images as part of a fictional story on the web. Nor did they approve the captions that appear under their photos. Without a model release, the blogger risks lawsuits that he is likely to lose.
As with almost all people here, IANAL. Although I have played one on stage... eh, anyhow, I know that I've seen a lot of fiddly small print on photo contracts saying that they reserve the right to use the work for publicity purposes. Honestly, even if the Olan Mills (Gah... just saying the name brings back traumatic childhood memories of family photos) work fits as "work-for-hire" which I'm mildly doubtful of in this case, I would not be surprised if you sign away all rights to duplication etc. of the picture.
I know that the portrait place in my hometown has pursued action against classmates who scanned in their senior pictures and placed them online... I have no idea if anything came of it other than a bunch of spooked kids removing photos from their webpages.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
<sarcasm>So when are *you* going to learn that HTML hass less-than and greater-than signs around tags?</sarcasm>
heh, when are *you* gonna learn the definition of sarcasm?
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
Hi! I found that diary. It's currently at www.ironfist.org/~bruce/diary. My contact info is there, if any of you care to reach me.