how to find the oldest (=original) file on the Internet?

[Curt]

Many times I have wondered how on earth law enforcements etcetera can manage to prove originality of files on the Internet. Not because I have any special interest in the official side of the subject, but (among other reasons) because I have a picture that I am convinced is a forgery - and I don't know how to find the OLDEST version on the 'net, to prove my suspicion right. I don't think it is enough to have a "wayback" version.

Furthermore I think the subject itself is very important. Google (and the other search providers as well) will always offer to order search results > Newest or > Most Popular, etcetera, but never in accordance with OLDEST / ORIGINAL, , so we are always left with the maybe_re-edited version; the maybe_a_lie! Perhaps pro' searchers can make a search engine order the search results the trustworthy way, but I can't. Can you? Is Google even able to search for the oldest file?

[KynloStephen66515]

I know the oldest DOMAIN NAME on the internet is http://symbolics.com/ but thats about it when it comes to this issue lol.

[kunkel321]

Didn't the internet start at some university?  That would be the 'original' stuff, I imagine...

[AndyM]

Didn't the internet start at some university?  That would be the 'original' stuff, I imagine...

It started with ARPANET.  From Wikipedia:

The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET), was the world's first operational packet switching network and the core network of a set that came to compose the global Internet. The network was funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) of the United States Department of Defense for use by its projects at universities and research laboratories in the US. The packet switching of the ARPANET was based on designs by Lawrence Roberts of the Lincoln Laboratory.[1]

So the oldest file might be something military.

[Renegade]

So the oldest file might be something military.

I would have guessed pron... :-)

[rgdot]

RIAA owns all oldest and original content

[KynloStephen66515]

RIAA owns all oldest and original content

Even asking about it is against federal law! 

[PhilB66]

Seems like no one really read Curt's post.

[Curt]

-but we had good fun :-)

[IainB]

I don't see how you could ever identify the "oldest" version file of a digital image. It might be (say) that you find the first version to appear on the 'net, but that wouldn't necessarily prove that it was the oldest/original. The oldest might not have been copied to the 'net until later, if at all. If the original was likely to be very old, then it would probably be an analogue image.

Finding the "oldest" would thus probably not prove anything terribly useful - would it?
You probably couldn't even be certain about file creation dates either.
Heck, you can't be sure of anything nowadays, there's so much garbage flying around.

For example, look at all those fraudulent photos you see of Michael Jackson as a child-star. He's depicted as being black or dark-brown-skinned with frizzy hair and African-American features for goodness' sake. Somebody sure got that wrong! He was a white-skinned Caucasian with longish straight black hair and a pointy nose.

[nosh]

Have you tried Google's reverse image search? It lets you enter a custom date range so you can manually work your way backwards.

[attachimg=#]

Except...

I don't see how you could ever identify the "oldest" version file of a digital image.

+1

[Renegade]

Seems like no one really read Curt's post.

I don't think it can be answered. You can modify the date and time on a file, so there's really no such thing as an audit trail for a file.

[IainB]

...I don't think it can be answered. You can modify the date and time on a file, so there's really no such thing as an audit trail for a file.

If the file had been input to the 'net a long time ago, then it might have been done in a batch process, as opposed to on an ad hoc basis. In the old days of batch processing, there was usually a rigorous batch control record kept for all batch input data, with things like input document counts, data types, hash totals of any numeric (e.g., $ money) fields manually input (via data entry).
So the batch control record for an image capture/input process could conceivably provide a decent audit trail.

You'd not be so likely to find things like that nowadays though, unless (say) it was Banking or Government/Defence data capture/input.