
The Two Teenagers Who Run the Popular Twitter Feed @HistoryInPics - freshfey
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/01/the-2-teenagers-who-run-the-wildly-popular-twitter-feed-historyinpics/283291/?utm_content=buffer32d49&utm_source=twitter.com
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digitalengineer
This: "The audiences that Di Petta and Cameron have built are created with the
work of photographers _who they don 't pay or even credit_. They don't provide
sources for the photographs or the captions that accompany them. Sometimes
they get stuff wrong and/or post copyrighted photographs. "

Combined with this: "I'm sure the majority of photographers would be glad to
have their work seen by the massives."

Nothing 'new media' about it. Theft plain and simple.

~~~
burntsushi
> Theft plain and simple.

Well, no, not plain and simple. At the worst, it's copyright infringement.

You may think this is a pedantic correction, and from your point of view,
maybe it is. But it isn't for people who see intellectual property as unjust.

~~~
archgrove
This trope is getting exceedingly tired, on par with the "taxation is theft",
"atheism is a religion" and "Linux should be called GNU/Linux" brigades that
often crop up in the appropriate discussions. Theft and "steal" have long been
used outside of the OED definitions; I can be a "thief of time", "steal an
idea", "steal a base" and so forth. "Theft" and "steal" are appropriate words
for the behaviour of people who have decided, in defiance of the laws and
remunerative structures society has constructed, that they're entitled to the
work of people without giving anything back (apart from some advice like "I'm
giving you free advertising", "find a new business model" or "this will
actually help you in the long run"). Society has created intellectual
property, in the same way it created physical property, and if you can steal
the later, you can surely steal the former.

One other angle on this, for the "steal _absolutely must_ deprive someone of
something" view, well - something _is_ actually lost, that cannot be replaced.
The right of the IP creator to be repaid by the person who grabbed it. Many
people say "Well, I'd never have bought it anyway". Whilst true for now, would
it still be true in 1 year? 5? 10? Would you have bought it for your kids, or
because a sequel came out that you _do_ want to buy? By taking it, you rob the
person of the ability to sell it to you in the future.

I think it's incumbent upon anyone who thinks "intellectual property is
unjust" and who acts on this belief by just denying its existence, to propose
and get support for a viable alternative for supporting the millions of people
who depend on it for their livelihood. Otherwise, you're just an anarchist,
burning the system down and denying any contribution to the people who have
committed to a certain lifestyle on the guarantees _currently_ provided by
society.

~~~
burntsushi
It's not just my distinction; it's a distinction made in courts too. The law
is quite clear. Copyright infringement is not theft.

> And, from my perspective, something is actually lost, that cannot be
> replaced. The right of the IP creator to be repaid by the person who grabbed
> it.

Well, yes... Supposing that IP rights should exist!

Instead of getting dragged into a big long debate, I'll just give you two
sources. The first, "Information Feudalism: Who Owns the Knowledge Economy?"
by Peter Drahos and John Braithwaite chronicles the harm brought by IP with
real world examples. The second, "Against Intellectual Property" by Stephan
Kinsella is a philosophical/libertarian argument.

(The authors of Information Feudalism don't think IP should be abolished, so
you may find it more credible.)

~~~
archgrove
I'll have a look at those, thanks. In response to your points, the language
used by courts is _exceedingly_ specific, and bears little resemblance to the
language used by people in day to day life. For example, in English law, I can
"assault" you without ever having touched you. In fact, if I touch you, it's
no longer assault. The dictionary definition, and common use, would require
that I do more than look menacingly at you, but in the courts, I would have
"assaulted" you. I claim the same holds for theft/stealing in an IP situation.

> Well, yes... Supposing that IP rights should exist!

Well, of course. But we could have the same debate about property rights, so I
could deny that "theft" exists at all, yet the language used to describe theft
wouldn't change.

~~~
burntsushi
You're basically saying I'm being too pedantic.

I recognized that in my initial comment as a potential criticism. I did so for
precisely the reasons you have brought up. Why? Because I understand terms can
have colloquial and technical meanings.

But this does not imply that we shouldn't call attention to technicalities,
particularly if it's with respect to an issue one thinks is important.

However, you seem to be arguing that even a technical application of theft is
applicable to IP. I don't know how to disagree with that without diving into
tedious details about what makes "ownership" a viable concept in the first
place. Kinsella addresses it in the source I cited in a previous comment. So I
defer.

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mbateman
Di Petta's flip attitude towards copyright is contemptible. But it's true that
it is often impractical to get information about creators and rights. I wonder
part of the solution isn't some service that decreased the friction (by a lot)
for looking up the relevant information. (As I'm typing this I realize this
probably isn't a new thought.)

~~~
masklinn
> Di Petta's flip attitude towards copyright is contemptible. But it's true
> that it is often impractical to get information about creators and rights.

It _sometimes_ is. Time and again, people have checked the pair's featured
pictures and found sources in a few minutes.

~~~
mbateman
I totally agree. And again I don't want to excuse their behavior.

But it being inconsistently easy to find a source and copyright information is
also a problem that it would be nice to have solved. That there's a lot of
variance in this process is itself a disincentive to engaging in it.

It would be beneficial for everyone if, in general, finding sources was as
easy as finding the images to begin with. There's no in principle reason (or
is there?) why technology has to make content discovery easy and source
discovery difficult, it just is that way right now.

------
brucehart
I stopped following accounts like this because of their promotion tactics.
They retweet stuff from other accounts and then delete it 15 minutes later. If
you look at the feed before subscribing, it looks like it is a bunch of
interesting photos. Once you start following them, you see these lower quality
retweets at the top of your feed that are deleted as soon as they start to get
pushed down on subscriber timelines.

~~~
fr0sty
If you aren't un-following merely on principle, you can turn off re-tweets per
followee. I find the feature very useful.

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yetanotherphd
I think the only difference between these entrepreneurs and big businesses is
that big businesses would say "talk to our lawyers" instead of "talk to our
lawyers, lol".

That said, if they do get sued I'm not going to feel sorry for them.

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instakill
> Who really deserves the scorn—the two best players in the game or the people
> who own the stadium?

Are the two mutually excluded? I'm not sure about the platforms, but the
owners of the account are definitely in the wrong. Ignorance doesn't absolve
you of your responsibility to play within the bounds of the law.

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md224
A recent tweet from Kyle Cameron's twitter feed:

"If The Wolf Of Wall Street doesn't inspire you to become successful, nothing
will." [1]

Makes me a little sad.

[1]
[https://twitter.com/GirlsGoneKyle/status/427666832636403712](https://twitter.com/GirlsGoneKyle/status/427666832636403712)

~~~
GuiA
He's a 19 year old making money selling Twitter accounts. I wouldn't spend too
much time looking his way for deep life advice and insights.

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truxs
So basically to start a successful account all you need to do is find a
popular subreddit and upload most upvoted post on Twitter

~~~
smackfu
Not just that, the key is to already have followers on a separate account, and
then you can cross post them to build up the new one.

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NamTaf
I'm not terribly surprised they're run by teens. I've seen them retweet some
pretty bad/offensive tweets on both accounts before shortly deleting them
(e.g.: misogynistic comments about periods), never mind their cross-promotion
and all that. It's as if they mis-judged what they could get away with,
because I couldn't work out why someone would want to see a photo of blood-
stained pants otherwise.

I briefly followed Earth Pics until they started unrelentingly posting
obviously fake photos with no attempt to do research into whether they were
real or not. HIP has the same dirty feel to it and so it's no surprised to
find out they're related.

They've taken two very possibly interesting topics to run a twitter feed on,
and essentially run them in to the ground by not doing even a modicum of work
to ensure some sort of integrity behind them. Maybe it's an intentional
decision, I don't know, but it just seems like when you're trying to appeal to
a semi-academic interest such as geography or history, you'd benefit from
doing some fact-checking and verification.

It'd be as if IFLS started posting pseudo-science, for example. In fact,
exploring the relative success of both approaches would be a really cool study
into new-media or whatever buzzword you want to call it.

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calbear81
I think I've seen a lot of the @earthpics photos on the Earthporn sub-reddit.
A bot that scrapes that and cross posts the top photos to a twitter account
might work.

~~~
Nicholas_C
Sssshhhh, I'm working on that now.

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pbhjpbhj
>" _They are playing by rules that "old media" and most new media do not. To
one way of thinking, they are cheating at the media game, and that's why
they're winning. (Which they are.)_" //

It seems fairly often I hear a comment that so-and-so media company (BBC,
local paper, RIAA, ...) are using a private individuals media without
permission or attribution.

They're it seems serially copyright infringers. Whilst big-media generally
correct it after-the-fact when they're caught it seems worth noting that it's
not only "young punks" that are profiting by playing fast-and-loose with media
available online.

Yes there's a difference in complexion too: which goes both ways - if the
images are historic then arguably [morally] the creators have had time to make
them pay. The corollary of course is that unlicensed duplication of new
images, particularly those used in the news, is more damaging.

This is not to excuse such tortuous infringement but just to shed more light
on the context.

------
jere
1.3 million followers, eh?

Aaannd my headlines-from-1914 bot has 11 followers. tl;dr I suppose.

~~~
digitalengineer
Well, it would help if you added your Twitter handle when saying something
like that. Like the idea actually.

~~~
jere
I posted about it here before. It may be too dry, but I find it quite
entertaining. [https://twitter.com/NEWS_XX14](https://twitter.com/NEWS_XX14)

~~~
mr_luc
On the contrary! You _need_ to post links to these articles.

I want to read all of those articles.

I absolutely love the history leading up to and around the first world war,
I've read a good portion of the issues of Punch from those years. But a
headline is only enough to arouse my appetite without bedding her back down.

~~~
jere
Well, you can find the articles by googling the headlines. These are all from
the New York Times and you should find the first result is a link to a pdf
article there.

~~~
pieterhg
That's not how Twitter works

~~~
jere
Yea, how Twitter works is it eats up 24 characters on a URL. No thanks. I
figured the headlines were interesting enough on their own 99% of the time.

~~~
waterlesscloud
When your plan isn't working, it's time to re-evaluate.

------
evan_
Start re-posting their tweets on a halfway-popular account and see how quickly
they learn about copyright.

~~~
smackfu
But all they care about is the follower count. Once it hits a million, they
can sell off this account to someone who wants to monetize it.

I mean, they have no real attraction to "History in Pics" as a constant, or to
any particular post. They just care about it as something that people seem to
like to follow. If someone else rips off their content, I doubt that would
have any impact at all.

~~~
adventured
It's against Twitter's terms to sell an account or username. Does Twitter
commonly look the other way on this? Are there public examples of Twitter
accounts being sold for a lot of money?

~~~
pbhjpbhj
How about allowing someone else to post on that account, is that allowed? If
not I imagine nearly all corp accounts are in breach of their rules.

They don't need to "sell" it legally to create the same practical result.

Seems it's pretty unenforceable for Twitter?

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dkrich
I think we're in some kind of media bubble when a "news" website publishes
stories about people who steal content and Tweet it. This feels like a lot of
people chasing each other in circles without really producing any new content.

------
smackfu
The credit thing seems like a red herring. Either you have the license to the
photo or you don't.

~~~
_delirium
From an ethical perspective I often think credit in these cases is more
important than licensing, at least for older stuff. If it's a photo from the
1930s, I honestly don't care if some great-grandnephew technically owns the
copyright, but it _would_ be nice to have an accurate caption. The licensing
issue gets bigger in my mind the more recent the photos get.

~~~
dublinben
I agree. I think that (mis)attribution is a much more fundamental crime than
unauthorized reproduction. It's essentially fraud to pass these off as their
own works, or with incorrect captions.

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johnwards
Follow [https://twitter.com/PicPedant](https://twitter.com/PicPedant) for
lolz, and credits :)

------
jimmaswell
If you want the source, you can try Google Reverse Image Search

