In 1919 Willi Römer photographed a fight in Berlin during the occupation of the press district by revolutionaries. We follow the path of the image from being a document of an historic event to a digitalised commodity of Corbis, one of the largest image archives and stock agencies (for fee-based download). On Corbis' website the image has the (incorrect) title Revolution in Berlin - Forces loyal to the Kaiser and Imperial Government prepare to do battle against insurgents near end of World War I.

Corbis was founded by Bill Gates in 1989. The company owns more than 70 million photographs and has moved its analog collection to an underground storage space in a former limestone shaft in Pennsylvania. The company has as well purchased large (private) archives containing historically important photographs. Part of the collection was converted to a digital format‚ inscribed with a watermark‚ and posted on the company's website. This also happened with Römer's image. According to international law, the use of the photo had already long been public domain. Even following the sale and the removal of the watermark, the image exists under copyright due to the embedded watermark.

Ines Schaber highlights the interrelation between the image as private property and the writing of our common history. She exposes the potentially threatening, monopolistic-capitalistic appropriating of pictorial memory. On the original image she shows a letter that she wrote to Bill.