IRC was the source there for a couple weeks. Slashnet's channel was pretty good. You could see the fingerprints of the "unofficial releases" when the same story (often verbatim) hit all 4 IRC networks at the same time; then the news within the day. The "Let's Roll" story was conspicuously seeded.

Major media was sending out copyright takedowns within hours, often for photos they had no rights to in the first place. Our photo page got "we own this you can't show it" letters from multiple publishers, often on the same photo, several times for photos given to us (as public domain) by the people who took them.