HistoryInPics and Copyright Link

Petapixel has some good commentary on the Twitter account @HistoryInPics.

Where it gets interesting is when The Atlantic asks about sourcing. Xavier Di Petta, one of the entrepreneurial teens behind the account, says all the images they use are public domain, but even a cursory Google image search turns up some copyrighted images. (Including, quite possibly, their cover image of JFK, a pretty terrible crop of a well-known work by celebrated portrait photographer Arnold Newman.)

I’ve noticed that this week, the account started to add attribution to the posts on Twitter, which certainly is not a viable solution. I’m torn because I love seeing the old images, but it now feels a bit dirty now that I know they are copyrighted images. It seems like the duo is relying upon the slow take-down system provided by Twitter and that just feels wrong.