A few months ago, I bought a 750 GB hard drive on Craigslist from a total stranger for five bucks. He met me on a public street and handed it to me. I took it home and (no surprise) it didn’t work. What the hell. But I noticed that a ferrite-core inductor on the PCB (the detachable board on the back of the hard drive) was broken, so I thought I might as well experiment. Something about the seller (a desperate, disheveled-looking man) triggered my curiosity and I wanted to know what on earth might be on that hard drive, assuming it could be made to work. I found a place that sells PCBs, and I bought and installed what I thought was the right one. When I powered it on, for the first time the drive spun normally and sounded perfectly good. However, it could not be recognized by the computer BIOS, so I contacted the PCB seller, who assured me that if the drive was OK, they could simply transfer the firmware of the bad one and turn the new one into a clone. He was right. The BIOS saw the drive and I was able to install it as a Windows device. However, it was not readable in Windows (it seems to be a “dynamic disk”), and I didn’t want to wipe it without a closer look.
First I left the drive in and started my computer on a GParted CD (Linux partitioning software) and I saw that it had a name — and 364 GB of data. So I started up again in Linux Mint, and VOILA! It is a vast collection of… stuff. Whoever had it was a packrat, a hacker, and quite well read.
I have a legal question which sounds simpler than it is.
Who owns the contents of the drive?
I own the drive, but there is so much stuff in there that it would take me forever just to read the various file names. For example, just one folder alone contains over 100 .avi and .mpg files. There are endless books, downloaded software and so many things that I don’t have the time even to inventory them. Are they “mine”? Do I possess them? This drive was dead, and I brought it to life. So a good argument can be made that it is mine, but does that mean I own what someone else put there?
What is ownership?
Beats me, but I’ll bet someone could make an interesting movie about such phenomena.
Comments
11 responses to “Very hard drive question”
I think you would own any part of it where you had knowledge that the previous owner does not have backups, original disks, or other means to reinstall it under the original license agreements.
I had zero knowledge of anything about the owner or what he had, other than the physical drive. I only read its contents in Linux.
In no way am I authoritative, however, if I we’re to speculate strictly on my years of experience in and around copyright issues, I’d say you don’t own any of the content of the drive. If the numerous licenses to USE the software, video, and audio files, and other copyrighted works were not expressly transferred to you along with all documentation and attached privileges, you probably cannot even legally use the content for personal purposes let alone commercial. Even then, the whole “ownership” issue is a tough one. As to the non-copyright materials, like photographs or recordings, personal documents and such, they too may be protected depending on whats contained in them. To further darken this, if the content is illegal in nature(inappropriate pictures of minors), you may be the one now in possession of (and responsible for) illegal content. I would suggest you wipe the drive completely with a tool that over-writes the content multiple times, not just erases it. If you suspect the content is of the type that might put you on some government list, I would suggest you turn it over to the police without further “browsing”.
Mark, I have seen nothing that appears to be illegal pictures of minors, and if I had I wouldn’t have written this post. (I’d have taken my cutting torch to the drive.) Just a huge treasure trove of special interest adult stuff which had me laughing out loud. But seriously, I am not altogether sure that I legally “own” what I never purchased, downloaded, and for the most part I have not seen — any more than I would own the contents of a house I bought at a foreclosure or inherited from a distant relative. The traditional rule is that possession has to be intentional.
OTOH, there is a distinction between ownership and possession. A friend owned a factory that made things he was not allowed to see or possess, because they were classified. So, even though he owned the factory and the raw materials that went into them, he could not legally possess them. Ditto, owners of drug stores who are not licensed pharmacists are not allowed to possess what they sell.
Well, now I think, I thought wrong. Not very unusual for me.
Licensing does add an interesting wrinkle.
I saw a nice used car for the ridiculously low price $800, and the seller says the reason it is so cheap is that he has no title. Which means that if I bought it and drove it home, I would possess something I did not own. Similarly, if someone abandoned a car in my driveway, I would possess it, but would not own it. In this town, abandoned bicycles litter the streets, and are often discarded on private property. Ownership is unclear, although there is no registration system for bikes, and they are treated as salvage or junk. Am I entitled to throw something in the trash that is not mine? Can I sell the hard drive I got working? Do I “possess” my unwanted trash? Can I give away what I don’t want to possess? It is very puzzling, and could be legally problematic depending on the item involved. Landlords deal with unwanted property all the time — legally or not? Tenants routinely move out, leaving behind valuable things that may not have been theirs to begin with.
I think it is crazy to buy a hard drive with data on it, especially from someone you don’t know.
If I were you, I would immediately cut the drive in half, smash both halves to rubble with a sledge hammer and then divide the rubble between 2-3 different landfills.
DO NOT!!!! under any circumstances give it to the police.
I just looked on Amazon and you can buy a 750gb drive for about $70. Saving $65 is not worth putting your entire life, reputation and assets at risk.
Costco had 1.5TB external drives for around $100.
Sure, probably nothing will happen. It is foolish to take the chance.
But that is just me. I know I am paranoid but I worry whether I am paranoid enough.
John Henry
Destroy the data. Not because you will encounter trouble (unless others learn you have illegal material) but because it is a good moral act.
You bought a drive, a device. Unless you were told you were also buying data you have no claim to it.
In general you can’t own the data unless the previous possessor really owned it. Otherwise you could just buy a stolen car and save a lot of money.
I did not buy a hard drive knowing there was anything on it; I bought a hard drive that I suspected might not work, and I got it working. This was a storage drive, not a working OS drive. Other than a file containing “apps” which are not installed and which would probably be illegal to install without buying licenses, there is really nothing I can see which would be illegal per se. There are lots of adult porn videos and plenty of music and books, most of which I am sure were downloaded and shared from wherever. I don’t own them and I don’t want to. The videos bore me, the music irritates me, and some of the books are interesting, but whether anyone “owns” it strikes me as impossible to answer. I am not even sure I possess it.
But isn’t what’s on that drive speech? Don’t I have as much of a First Amendment right to read and peruse found information as I would to read through a box of found books? Or watch found video tapes?
Or is there something magical about a hard drive which renders reading it taboo? If so, why?
Eric you make some good arguments but this is not about a possible magical quality of disk drives. That is a Red Herring.
Suppose you found a box full of counterfeit money not one full of books. The law does not say you cannot read the serial numbers or count it. Instead the law says you cannot keep it, even if you never use it.
You can keep the material, I might myself for a while. The chance of it causing you grief is very small. But copyrights, titles, and licenses are real. And IMO unexpectedly coming into possession is an excuse, not a valid defense.
Historical tidbit: Bruno Hauptmann who was convicted of kidnapping the Lindbergh baby, was found with the ransom money. But he claimed he came into possession innocently, had no reason to know it was ransom money, and that he did not do the kidnapping.
Don’t worry. Capital Punishment is rare now.
Actually, even with counterfeit money, mere possession is not illegal per se.
There has to be an intent to defraud:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/472
***QUOTE***
Whoever, with intent to defraud, passes, utters, publishes, or sells, or attempts to pass, utter, publish, or sell, or with like intent brings into the United States or keeps in possession or conceals any falsely made, forged, counterfeited, or altered obligation or other security of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.
***END QUOTE***
Which means that if I find, say, a $100 bill which I suspect is counterfeit, unless I intend to defraud someone with it, I can possess it.
Possession of copyrighted material is also not illegal per se. What is a crime under copyright law is “willful infringement”:
http://nationallawforum.com/2011/04/29/%E2%80%9Cinnocent%E2%80%9D-criminals-criminal-copyright-infringement-willfulness-and-fair-use/
Not only that, but even if it appears to have been copied, that alone does not establish criminal willfulness by anyone:
“evidence of reproduction or distribution of a copyrighted work, by itself, shall not be sufficient to establish willful infringement of a copyright.”
How could it be, unless it could be shown that whoever had reproduced it did so without permission? And while possession could be part of the evidence that might prove there was illegal downloading, possession alone is not a crime. How could it be? Almost all music is copyrighted, and so are most books. Nearly everyone possesses copyrighted material, and much of it may have been copied without permission of the copyright holder. If you buy a used computer, you are not chargeable with copyright violations of the previous owner.
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110720105216AAKzynI
If you have photocopies of a book, a copy of CD or a video, that does not mean that you illegally copied it, or willfully obtained it knowing it was copyrighted.
I never copied, shared, or reproduced anything on that drive, nor do I know who did or what the circumstances were.