Gizmodo's Photos from the Massive iPhone 4 Leak Have Disappeared

Photographs from a historic moment in tech news history, the day a Gizmodo reporter published hands-on pics of the then-not-yet-announced iPhone 4, are now missing. From a report: And they're not alone -- vast quantities of pictures from G/O Media sites like The Onion, Jalopnik, and Deadspin (as well as Gizmodo) have been removed, reportedly intentionally, according to Gawker. A recent Gawker report highlights that Buzzfeed has also been wiping many older images from the web. Still, Buzzfeed's reason for doing so is relatively apparent after management explained the copyright claims on old photos deemed some of them "high-risk." Both cases are examples of "link rot," where content on the internet is drastically changed because it either disappears entirely or because essential pieces have gone missing.

Doesn't the Internet Archive have them?

[presidenteloco]

The Wayback Machine?

If these were on public, non-login sites, wouldn't they be archived?

Or are there frequent DCMA requests to The Internet Archive that result in link rot even there?

If so, it seems to me a distributed Internet Archive not based legally in the US of A would be a better plan going forward.

Re:

[presidenteloco]

*DMCA

Wayback machine

[Anonymous Coward]

Here ya go: https://web.archive.org/web/20... [archive.org]

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

What a clickbait title

[UnknowingFool]

So someone at Gawker removed a large number of photos across all their sites including the iPhone 4 leak ones on the Gizmodo site. That really is less exciting than the title suggests.

Link rot

[timeOday]

The idea of link rot is a vestige of an earlier era in the Internet when everything was to be based on URLs that would uniquely and permanently identify certain information. Turns out that's mostly not what people and business need and want, and mostly not how the web is used (although it would be nice in certain respects if it were not). But most things are dynamic. Archiving the web is a useful enterprise; hoping for it to remain static so it's self-archiving is not going to happen.

Re:

[Jhon]

"The idea of link rot is a vestige of an earlier era in the Internet when everything was to be based on URLs that would uniquely and permanently identify certain information"

You mean that "waybackwhen" in the by-gone days of the internet, we used to use some "uniform" format to identify a "resource" "location"?

Wow. Complicated. No wonder we moved away from that and just open "google" and ask for what we want...

But how do we find "google?"

Archive.org has copies...

[Anonymous Coward]

https://web.archive.org/web/20210204065723/https://gizmodo.com/police-seize-jason-chens-computers-5524843 [archive.org]
and
https://web.archive.org/web/20210314162756im_/https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/17u1uw1smbc8cjpg.jpg [archive.org]
and
https://web.archive.org/web/20210702094920im_/https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/17u1uw7psp9ovjpg.jpg [archive.org]
and
https://web.archive.org/web/20210702094920im_/https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/17u1uw7pt89xtjpg.jpg [archive.org]
and
https://web.archive.org/web/20210702094920im_/https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/17u1uw1sql0zpjpg.jpg [archive.org]

Alternate explanation

[SuperKendall]

Images going up as NFTs in 3...2...1...

If you want to see an iPhone 4..

[Powercntrl]

..just go to Apple.com. They've pretty much reused the design for the two most recent generations.

we've already lost the most important photo

[Anonymous Coward]

We already lost the most important photo of our generation - the tweet Kanye sent showing off his penis. The many sites that republished it all censored the photo; it is basically impossible to find the original photo now. Nobody can understand his singular gift if they can't see it. What a tragedy.

Not missing. You just need a login to view

[whoever57]

The images are there if you are logged into a Kinja site.

Surely they are available.

[Fly Swatter]

On microfiche.

Abolish photography copyright

[RegistrationIsDumb83]

They snap a pic of something in the world (that they didn't make) and then ree about their ownership rights. This is especially noxious since news should be fair use, but gets litigated anyway. Photographers are almost as bad as patent trolls.

Stross was right

[zeeky boogy doog]

Thanks to the insanity of copyright lunacy in the present world, in the future the late 20th and early 21st centuries will be black holes of information.

When you control history...

[Chas]

You control the future.