Image & bandwidth theft: just say no
29 February 2008 - by Simone
Today I’m getting a fair bit of traffic from MySpace, Friendster and Hi5 users, amongst others, due to the fact that I have disabled hotlinking of images from my blog.
I am now referring any hotlinked image to another image which informs visitors that the user is stealing my bandwidth (quite apart from the fact that they are breaching my copyright!) … which causes layouts to look a bit like this:
It appears that a number of visitors are here to try to find the original image in order to copy it and upload it elsewhere instead. However, even if you are able to find it (many have been removed), this would be breaking the law and leaving yourself open to being penalised by your host, your ISP or even being pursued legally.
Instead, be aware of my copyright policy. Many of the images used in this blog are all rights reserved - meaning you cannot use them at all without permission. This also goes for all of the text of the blog and the design elements it uses.
However, the images of the jewellery I sell are covered by a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
This means you must give me clear attribution (including a link) for any such image you use and the image must not be used in derivative works (this includes background or general layout images used in web page designs). Additionally you cannot use my images for any commercial application. If you are hosting a site providing free MySpace (or other) layouts and are earning money from advertising revenue, I consider this a commercial application. If you wish to do any of these things, you need my permission.
As for bandwidth theft: it sucks. It’s also risky: the person you are stealing from can very easily replace the content you are stealing with something deeply unsavoury which will cause great offence to your visitors and may even get your site shut down. I am currently considering what this might be if the theft continues, even in spite of my current referral image, so consider yourselves warned!
If you have up until now been unaware that you have been stealing or have simply been unaware that this is even a problem, it’s time to educate yourself about it. Copying and pasting code from elsewhere without looking at it is no excuse.
For those of you who are worried about falling victim to this sort of problem, I strongly suggest you have a look into Creative Commons licensing for your images. This doesn’t prevent theft, of course, but it does give you a clear policy and - depending on the license you choose - can leave the way open for people to legitimately promote what you do without breaching your copyright or needing to spend time getting your permission.
Additionally I suggest you have a look into hotlink protection for your blog or for the hosting package you may have.
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by make me » blog archive » Love Hurts - Etsy Treasury list - handmade jewelry, indie design, art objects ... and more - a blog for simone walsh jewelry + objects on 29 February 2008 at 4:55 pm |
Iv been reading your blog for a while (one of my fav’s actually) and i am so glad you have the same problem as me!! my images have been used as front pages in some of the ‘myspace mags’ luckily, my web address was on them, however I have not been able to stop images being saved and used, and I am going to look into the hot linking thing!! keep up the good work!
kate
by kate selene williams on 2 March 2008 at 5:38 am |
Ha! I love the accompanying picture in this post. Score one to Simone!
Those stolen Myspace backgrounds make me want to tear my hair out, as do the sites offering MY images for upload too! *grr*
by Meshell on 6 March 2008 at 10:39 am |
hey god! jeez! so, er, how do you find out exactly? my blog is free, its a blogger blog, so i dont really have to worry about exceeding bandwidth right? but how do i find out when someone is hotlinking a pic off it? my blog is way full of pics! id hate for someone to be steeeeling them. mmmmmmmm. specially for a myspace background. gross! what pic did they steal from you??
by monkeyboner on 7 March 2008 at 12:25 pm |
I found out because my bandwidth started going up a lot over the last couple of months and I didn’t think I was suddenly quite that popular!
The statistics applications I use weren’t giving me the right information, but after trying something else the problem leapt out at me - all of this traffic going to one single image. A bit more digging around traced it back to a MySpace layout being hosted on some dodgy ‘free layouts’ site. And all of the referrals to that image were coming either from that site or from a multitude of MySpace profiles. I could see that there were also other images being stolen, but this particular one was the main problem.
I’m really not sure how you’d find out about it using a hosted blogging application like Blogger though - I host my own, so have access to the server logs and the like. It also means that I can put protection in place to try to avoid it from happening. But also it means that I do have restricted bandwidth which I need to respect as a friend hosts my sites for me.
As for those remaining MySpace people who persist in stealing my bandwidth after a week of me going from politely informing them, to threatening them, to then insulting their intelligence (and, yes, lots of them have logged in, seen this and done nothing) … they’ve now been subjected to the porn option. Having porn in a MySpace profile is against the terms of service. Those who don’t remove the image link immediately are likely to have their profiles deleted - I’m even reporting them to MySpace myself! Buh bye!
by Simone on 7 March 2008 at 12:40 pm |
I love a good old fashioned ball kicking. Fight the good fight!
by Jodie {meringue} on 7 March 2008 at 8:41 pm |
Gosh, you’re so clever Simone… I think about these things but have NO idea how to fix it. Nice one, really really nice one.
by Penny - Pocket Carnival on 11 March 2008 at 1:50 pm |
I’ve had server accounts shut down before due to excessive hotlinking! So, good move!
by Gold Chains on 25 March 2008 at 8:33 pm |