AFP v. Morel: The debate rages on

Why Twitpic

I'd love to know why Twitpic was chosen as the method to show the images to the world?

Unless he took them with his mobile phone, it strikes me as a very weird technology choice to make.

Granted that shouldn't take away from how the copyright was ignored, but as someone who knows tech, Twitpic would be the last resort for anything important.

Needs must

You're in a country where infrastructure is collapsing. You're using tech that you have to hand.

Chances are, it was the only functional account that maintained a connection long enough. I've certainly had to work around tech long enough to accept that sometimes the functional solution isn't necessarily the best one.

Using Twitpic to 'park' photos

Uploading photos to Twitpic is perhaps one of the easiest ways to get photos on the web in difficult circumstances and it is usually only your Twitter followers and any Twitter lists that you are on that will link to the photos.

Twitpic is not broadcast widely such as websites like Flickr which are heavily trawled by Google and easy to find, therefore it is reasonable to assume that a photographer would upload photos to Twitpic that were for sale later. In any case it is usual to upload low resolution images to Twitpic whereas a newspaper or magazine will require those photos at a higher resolution.

pay us for abusing you

These are the same people (the French) who made Haiti pay for its independence. I am not surprised by this action against a Haitian photographer's property. Their mentality is, we abuse you, then you must pay us money for that favor.