If it's only for research, why couldn't Ed simply save the pics in a little rar file put on Rapidshare, as a safety measure? This way, the researchers will have easily all the pics, even the 0,1% of the ones, whose auction links don't last many weeks. For me, as a lazy one, it would be a very good solution to download, once a week for instance, easily and in one time all these beautiful pics. By the way, if it's only for "research", the bidders who succeed in winning these pics could for instance upload here big-size scans, this would be perfect for "research" ;-)
And if it's only for "research", there's also the solution of this Polish forum:
http://www.odkrywca.pl/pokaz_watek.php?id=115351 Of course, if the guys who are against the current system, are not OK with these solutions perfect for "research", it's quite possible that "research" is not their main reason ;-)