You know what isn’t nice? When you spend a couple hours making something and then offer it up freely on the Internet, only to have clueless jerks source it directly from your server. I try to be understanding but, as this is the second time this has happened with the very same image, it kinda pissed me off. I decided to get revenge. How long do you think before this guy and these people and the friggin’ Emperor notice?
For future reference, I’m really happy to have people put the Valentine on their sites. I’ve gotten some great thank you comments in the past week or two and I’m just glad that folks like it. But if you want to display it, save it to your hard drive, upload it to your own web host, and source it from there. (You’re welcome to link – as in, <a href=”whatever”> – to it all you want. I’m just talking about people who do this – <img src=”whatever”>.) I know this is a controversial issue, and I’ve had lengthy arguments about it with the Snook. Some people think that everything posted on the ‘Net is fair game. I think of it as more a question of courtesy. For example, consider the little old lady that gives away samples of food at the grocery store. Sure, they’re free, and theoretically you could sit in front of her all day eating the samples without any intention of buying the food. But it’s a jerk move, you know? Just because something is free doesn’t mean you should hog it, especially without asking the permission of the giver. Am I in the minority here? Does that sound totally irrational? I’m really asking, because it just seems like there are fewer people who care about such niceties, and more people who are only interested in taking whatever they can.
And it didn’t help that I was hungover today.
10 responses
Here’s an excellent link with a straightforward description if you have no idea what I’m talking about.
you should try having a thing where people can’t post your pictures directly from your server.. or what’s even more fun! replace it with a pornographic or weird ass pic 😀 keep changing the url/image, that’ll learn them
Yeah, I’ve blocked them on my Dahl site. But I don’t want to do that here because occasionally I’ve hosted images for friends without server space. So instead for now I’ve just replaced it with a big “I’M A CREEP” image. Petty, sure, but effective.
Using net images this way is just bad netiquette.
I guess Rodd can sort you out but can’t you just make it that only this web site can load the image into the web page? When other people want it, they can just Right Click and save it.
Also I’ve just realised something even more friggin annoying than Flash. It’s music on web pages that blares at you without any warning.
that’s fricking hilarious! i feel a little warm glow for you, imagining when they next click back on to discover that apparently nobody likes them…
but, yes, extremely bad ettiquette. love the card though, but my favourite was “let’s bee friends… and there’s a picture of a bee on it!”
ralph wiggum, you are the wind beneath my wings.
UPDATE: The first guy has switched to a saved version. So good for him, and thanks for that. Evidently my strategy worked!
I think the message board people are the worst. Half of them just drag and drop. Some idiot at one board wanted to use a Willy Wonka image as his little personal icon. Instead, though, he was trying to use the URL of the PAGE instead of the image. Which of course didn’t work, but I was still getting hundreds of hits a day whenever anyone looked at one of his posts. Since he didn’t have a publicly available e-mail address (I even tried joining to get it), I tried contacting the site that ran the board. Never responded. So now I just block their whole site. Sucks, huh?
I kinda like this whole “embarrass them with an insulting image” thing. Hopefully it’ll teach people who didn’t know what they were doing was rude. As long as the bandwidth it causes me isn’t toooo much, I’ll stick with it for now.
I’d like to think that most of these are a result of ignorance & not ill intent. I don’t see the issue as entirely black and white–what about the dozens of ‘You are…’ quiz result graphics that everyone posts on their sites? As a quiz creator, do you implicitly give people permission to link your images?
Since Kris explicitly said how NOT to link to the card and all of those quiz creators provide detailed instructions about how to link the pix, I don’t think that it’s that ambiguous. I’m sure there’s ignorance involved as well, however; I’m frequently guilty of netiquette ignorance. 🙂
Yeah, I would say that most people have no idea that this sort of caper can be harmful to others. But then again, if someone is capable of posting on a message board, they are probably versed enough in the www to know the score and have chosen to be REBELLIOUS! After all, dangerous and shifty types are very attractive, and have a lot of casual rubbing encounters. So yes, kill them all. With insults, and in future, skewers. Skewers are nasty.
Grandpa Joe, you are wise, as befits your years.