Undeveloped Film from a Soldier in WWII Discovered and Processed

I was actually watching him do that and I was thinking the same thing. I don't know anything about developing but I was thinking that if the casing has even a tiny crack then the camera flash would ruin at least one photo. The nice thing to do would be to send him a friendly email and tell him about it. Maybe he just doesn't realize it.

I know this sounds a bit "get off my lawn" even for only being in my late 20s, but I REALLY enjoyed darkroom time in high school photography classes and photography personally lost some of its magic to me when I switched. I was a senior just as digital was making its moves, but nothing was quite as satisfying as the trials and tribulations of meticulously processing film in that tiny little room.

Nothing quite as cool as dropping what seemed like a blank piece of paper into some chemicals and watching it transition into an actual photograph.

The clicky clicky sound triggered my memories of B&W film development as well (although it was only 5 years ago) :)

Unfortunately good negative scanners for 35mm and 120 are hard to get now. A modern flatbed of good quality will probably give decent results though.

"Although I don't miss the stink of the fixer."

Oh, wow! Those words triggered an immediate visceral recall of that very smell from some 25 years ago. I'd forgotten about it, and wouldn't have thought of it until you brought it up.

Oddly, since I associate it with good times and fond memories, I don't find the smell offensive, but the accuracy with which your words triggered its recall is fascinating!

> Digital photography just doesn't have the soul of actual film photography it's missing the physical connection.

Indeed! I just recently bought a couple of old 35mm SLR bodies and lenses to get back into film photography. With film, photography is certainly more deliberate and slower-paced. I also enjoyed darkroom work (years ago) as much, if not more, than taking photos. The darkroom was a nice, quiet place that was very relaxing.

>I do wish I had a better method to scan my old negatives and skip the printing part I did try it without much success in the mid 1990s with my first flatbed scanner.

You can get this done for you relatively cheaply (about 25 cents per frame). I actually have a slide/neg scanner that's out on loan but I decided a while back to just send my scanning out. It was never going to all get done if I waited until I got around to it.

..Which makes the story more interesting actually. I wonder if he had had any chance to write down his plan/thought of his journey while taking photos. Another interesting part is, how they saved the rolls during the war, how it is transferred back to USA..

For me those photos really help breathe life into that period of time, making it appear as more than just a series of abstract Wikipedia articles. Look at the contrast of those soldiers waiting next to a railroad against the fine architecture of the downtown. Today some of those folks are someone's feeble old grandpa telling stories of the old days, but look at how young and full of life they were in those pictures.

I'm a little disappointed that the top comment chain consists of belaboring the finer points of copyright statutes.

No need to be melancholy. That glorifies killing. Do you have the same sad feelings for the Paris gunmen that were killed? There's no fundamental difference between them. Remember of course what the purpose of the allies in WWII was - "to preserve our way of life" or so we won't "all be speaking German". It's not clear that tens of millions had to be be killed for that aim - only to end up with more tens of millions killed by the communist states that became successful as a result.

reading articles like this where SD cards have survived being boiled, trampled, washed and dunked in coffee or cola, makes me think its not impossible for certain SD cards stored in the right conditions to last possibly centuries

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3939333.stm

The SD cards may hold the data that long, but I don't think it's likely that it will be accessible. To computer enthusiasts with legacy hardware/software maybe. I shoot on film and I know that even my negatives will eventually fade. Photography has taught me to enjoy life because everything eventually ends.

This is something I worry about regardless of the specific storage media type.

I have all my photos on my hard drive backed up onto a two drive mirrored NAS device and uploaded to a third party cloud based backup service. Many of them also have low resolution versions posted on Facebook and Flickr. But I still worry that in 70 years no trace will be left of these photos.

Printed photos sitting in a photo book with each photo in its own plastic sleeve that is stored in a dry location away from light won't last forever, but it will probably last 70 years. My digital photos have to constantly be backed up and copied over time. Cloud backup services and social media websites will go out of business. Both the drives in my NAS will eventually fail, along with the drive in my PC. For these photos to survive, someone has to perpetually do work to keep them around.

Sometimes I wonder if, despite the fact that camera phones means we take an absolutely immense amount of pictures relative to other periods of time, if in 100 years there will be more photos from 1985-1995 than 2005-2015, just because the older photos were printed and stored in photo books.

At some point I should probably print my most important photos.

How long was the "guaranteed spec" on this film, do you think?

SD cards easily survive the kind of rough handling that would destroy a film; I can imagine the contacts corroding to the point where you'd have to replace them to read it, but the plastic casing is close to indestructible, and the stored data should be inert. Of course many will be lost or destroyed, but I would happily bet on any random SD card outlasting any random piece of film from the same era.

Never mind robustness, they're horribly easy to lose. I put a blank microSD card on my coffee table the other day and lost it instantly.

Re: photos, I think that long term security requires long term care, prioritisation of the important few for printed copies, and reviewing every few years. All of which take time and effort. :(

The shot of the men at the railroad tracks waiting is universal.

Another 500 years will pass and soldiers will still be waiting in line for something or other.

I really don't understand these comments pointing this out. Generally these "issues" tend to iron themselves out after some time. Now you could add "One comment completely ignoring the topic at hand" (referring to your comment).

And one thread saying exactly what I was thinking.

> I have doubts about this statement. Can someone with more expertise in this matter explain? It seems to me that the photographer holds the copyright unless the copyright was properly transferred. Simple discovering the film and processing it does not a copyright holder make.

I'd say you are 100% in the right here, the problem will be to find the person or their heirs to assert their claim.

I definitely do not think that finding the film is enough to stake a claim this broad.

see: http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-monkey-self...

Which has an interesting take on images with doubtful copyright status (selfie taken by a monkey, owner of the camera tried to assert copyright).

Thinking about it a bit more, if the original maker of the images or their heirs were to be nasty they could likely file for infringement of their rights.

Personally I think what the guy did was great, they're amazing images but asserting copyright goes one step too far. Maybe his argument is that by buying the film he owns the rights?

Edit: another relevant bit:

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

Heading 'legal challenge'.

AFAIK it does. It's how museums make money with reproductions. I might be wrong on this though.

I think what they are referring to is the presentation of the photos (for lack of a better way to put it). Best way to describe it is that it's similar to the copyright that a company (back in the day) that created what is known as a reverse phone directory. That's where you could find someone's phone number by address (or address by phone number). The point being that even though all the info is public (anyone can input same info from a free phone directory) the act of organizing it and displaying it in a certain way (reversed by address as only one example) gives you copyright over the presentation of the material. So you can't grab that wholesale.

Another example that I can think of is dnjournal.com which publishes a list of domain sales which they gather primarily (but not exclusively) from easily available info from other sources (like sedo.com). So you are free to do the same from the same sources. However you can't take the list they created, that is lift it from their site, and publish it without violating their copyright.

There may of course be some other principle involved obviously but off the top the above seems possible.

Edit: Appears what I am referring to is possibly a version of "derivative" work:

https://www.legalzoom.com/articles/what-are-derivative-works...

I think this also goes under "the golden rule" meaning he who has the gold rules. The film was undeveloped so someone could argue that that act was instrumental in making the pictures able to be seen (seems like a scotus grade discussion). The original owner took the pictures but he never created the image which people see. The image was created by the person who now claims copyright. Without the developing there are no images. May not win but perhaps most importantly a leg to stand on.

The barrier of copyright is extremely low. Simply reproducing copyright free works is already covered again by the copyright.

You are correct to have doubt. While it is criminally illegal to falsely claim copyright, there is almost no chance of prosecution. And the only entity able to sue under civil law would be the heirs of the photographer, who are unlikely to know that they hold the copyright. The public, while potentially deprived of the the ability to make use of the work, is not deemed to "have standing".

The seminal paper on the topic calls this "copyfraud":

  Copyfraud
  Jason Mazzone, University of Illinois College of Law
  Brooklyn Law School, Legal Studies Paper No. 40 
  New York University Law Review, Vol. 81, p. 1026, 2006 

  Abstract:      

  Copyfraud is everywhere. False copyright notices appear on 
  modern reprints of Shakespeare's plays, Beethoven's piano 
  scores, greeting card versions of Monet's Water Lilies, and 
  even the U.S. Constitution. Archives claim blanket 
  copyright in everything in their collections. Vendors of 
  microfilmed versions of historical newspapers assert 
  copyright ownership. These false copyright claims, which 
  are often accompanied by threatened litigation for 
  reproducing a work without the owner's permission, result 
  in users seeking licenses and paying fees to reproduce  
  works that are free for everyone to use. 

  Copyright law itself creates strong incentives for 
  copyfraud. The Copyright Act provides for no civil penalty 
  for falsely claiming ownership of public domain materials. 
  There is also no remedy under the Act for individuals who 
  wrongly refrain from legal copying or who make payment for 
  permission to copy something they are in fact entitled to 
  use for free. While falsely claiming copyright is 
  technically a criminal offense under the Act, prosecutions 
  are extremely rare. These circumstances have produced fraud 
  on an untold scale, with millions of works in the public 
  domain deemed copyrighted, and countless dollars paid out 
  every year in licensing fees to make copies that could be 
  made for free. Copyfraud stifles valid forms of 
  reproduction and undermines free speech. 

  Congress should amend the Copyright Act to allow private 
  parties to bring civil causes of action for false copyright 
  claims. Courts should extend the availability of the 
  copyright misuse defense to prevent copyright owners from 
  enforcing an otherwise valid copyright if they have engaged 
  in past copyfraud. In addition, Congress should further 
  protect the public domain by creating a national registry 
  listing public domain works and a symbol to designate those 
  works. Failing a congressional response, there may exist 
  remedies under state law and through the efforts of private 
  parties to achieve these ends.

http://ssrn.com/abstract=787244

> "The overlapped images: are these simply because the film didn't wind a fill frame?"

Yes - it's hard to appreciate how far camera tech has come since the 40s, and presumably also a typical soldier isn't bringing a high-end 35mm camera into the field.

More specifically, if there's play in the gears of the winding mechanism then you'll get a lot of variance when it comes to inter-frame space.

> "I have doubts about this statement. Can someone with more expertise in this matter explain?"

It doesn't have to be nefarious - they can assert copyright over the scans of the film without asserting copyright over the original images themselves (though in this case it does look like if you donate film they want the whole shebang).

It's like recording a cover - your recording itself has a separate copyright regardless of the copyright status of the song upon which it is based.

Like a cover song there could be some legal issues between the scanner and the copyright owner of the original film images, but presumably they sort this out between themselves.

About this:

"Copyright of All Images On This Website is Owned By The Rescued Film Project."

They are almost certainly making the claim under the various Orphan Work acts that several nations have passed recently:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orphan_works

Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with those laws, there is no question that these images fit the classic description of an orphan work.

To add to the copyright conversation, assuming the work is covered under U.S. law [1] then wouldn't it be covered under the Copyright of 1909 law [2]? This law only granted copyright for 60 years, which means copyright would have expired no later than 2005.

[1] Because the photographer was a U.S. soldier. If he took some of those photos in other countries there may be other laws in effect. [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Act_of_1909

Any pictures taken in the course of carrying out military service on behalf of the US might automatically be in the public domain for copyright purposes, I think, as the person would be an employee of the US government by definition. I don't know exactly how this plays out for military personnel but I'd imagine you waive a lot of private citizen rights when you set off on a tour of duty.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_status_of_work_by_the...