A few days ago, Fark was having a photoshop contest that I thought I'd participate in. I really liked the image. I only got as far as making a blank image (with no labels or reflections on it), so I just stuck it on my web server and linked to it in the Fark forum so that anyone who wanted a blank for their own submission could use it. I also made the image into my desktop wallpaper for a while, but I had to change it into something that didn't cause the blood vessels in my head to rupture slowly over time.
Well, I noticed this huge spike in traffic to 27.org in the log stats summary, and so I went looking for the cause. It turns out that a few people had seen my post to Fark, liked the blank image I made, and then posted links to the image on my server in various online forums. Here are some of the forums that I found:
- one
- two
- three
- four
- five
I went looking at the forums that linked my image and decided I'd rather they not have the liberty to see my content. I've got nothing against ricers (don't bother with any of that racism nonsense; it's not my term, just a very descriptive one), but read some of the .sigs that the people in the forum use. Not my crowd. So I took a cue from Jeremy Zawodny and decided to give them a new image to link to. (That new image is not safe for work, BTW, so don't bother clicking the link if you're at church or whatever.)
After I made the changes, I went back to the forums to see that they took effect. The comments are way funnier now than they were before. Yes, that is some "trippy shit".
I've been through the same nonsense too many times to count with people stealing images from Silver Ladder. I usually do the same as you did. I've replaced images with all kinds of stuff in response to people stealing my images. Lately it has been a standard image that says something like "Die Bandwidth Thief!" or something about why don't you link and give credit instead of just lifting the image? I mean, if they're gonna swipe it, at least save it to your hard drive and host it yourself. Don't leech someone's image AND let them keep hosting it for you.
At least twice a week it happens when I check the Status page at Silver Ladder.
The creepiest was when pictures of my friend Mario's wife that were up on his site were being used by some kind of German site with candid pictures of women. It wasn't exactly pr0n, but you could tell by the way the site was set up that it was for perverts. He quickly figured out the deal and removed the pics. They were standard "Welcome to my website, here's my wife, my family, my dog" type pics, but ended up being used for... um... evil.
Posted by Shane at July 30, 2003 2:55 AMThis might also work as a future image replacement (saved on your own server, of course):
http://www.40zone.com/gallery/3-4/fuck_you_cake
Posted by Shane at July 30, 2003 2:59 AMDon't even want to know where you got that replacement pic... blech!
Posted by Tess at July 30, 2003 10:29 AMI don't mind people "stealing" images. You put stuff on a public server and they get accessed. Someone wants to take the contents of their browser cache and stick it on their web page, I'm fine with that. Save an image off my site and use it on theirs? No problem. But it's a little rude and a lot lame to just link to someones's else's images, especially in something like a forum which gets a lot of views.
About where the image came from: I stole it from Jeremy's site. He had a similar problem and used that image. I figured I'd keep the theme going. I have no idea where he got it from.
Posted by wee at July 30, 2003 11:58 AMIndeed, the biggest thing IS the amount of traffic/hits coming from high-yield places like forums, however, by "stealing" I was specifically referring to original images I have made.
You are correct that by putting them up on the web, I am basically asking for them to be taken. I don't mind if anyone uses anything on my site. I just ask for a "photo by Shane Watson" or something similar and perhaps a hypertext link on my name if they happen to be feeling particularly generous. Help yourself to what is on my site. I just consider it common courtesy to give credit where credit is due.
A few images of mine in particular I have found on the web used several times, including a handful of times where the person using the image took credit for it as their own. No kidding. One guy was even using my Meat Pope image (http://www.silverladder.com/links/badscary/wingsmademeat.jpg - check it, you might like) in his Cafe Press store. Another one that gets used quite a bit is my "Martini As Element" piece (http://www.silverladder.com/art/martini.htm).
Like I said, I welcome anyone who wants to use my writing, pics, whatever. Just give some credit and/or a link and host it on your own space.
Although I did agree with that one guy that the Meat Pope would make a great t-shirt.
-S.
Posted by Shane at July 31, 2003 1:00 AMSteven Den Beste (of USS Clueless fame) had this problem (ironically also linked back to fark), he asked for help, and linked to the answer:
http://www.40zone.com/gallery/3-4/fuck_you_cake
Basically a rewrite (which I know you already use) so that other sites linking to your images will be shown a specific image (he puts up a pic of "Bandwidth theft" in the ol' circle with a line through it and his url).
Oops.. stupid clipboard.. and me not previewing.
Here's the real link:
http://www.allmyfaqs.com/faq.pl?Prevent_bandwidth_theft
Right on, Mig. Great link. Always good links from you. I knew there was a reason I enabled comments when I set this up. :-)
The one change I'd make is setting the rewrite condition to match a certain host, rather than anything but your host. That way I can send links in email or post to fark or whatever. Now I have to dust of the Apache 2.0 docs.
Posted by wee at August 2, 2003 5:29 AMMiguelito's fingers spake thustly:
>http://www.allmyfaqs.com/aq.pl?Prevent_bandwidth_theft
Oh this just effing rocks! Thanks for the link; I've been looking for ways to stop leaching and this did the trick in about 2 minutes.
/me is very happy. Thanks M and Wee!
G
Posted by gjb at August 2, 2003 6:58 PMOK, so my glee has turned sour.
The problem with the referr engine is it causes a loop (at least on he.net servers). I went from ~200 code 302's/day to 25000 yesterday, so I had to turn it off. I did find this that I've put in my .htaccess in /images:
SetEnvIfNoCase Referer "^http://lickmewhereipee.com/" local_ref=1
<FilesMatch ".(gif|jpg)">
Order Allow,Deny
Allow from env=local_ref
</FilesMatch>
Not as slick, but no more theft.
Posted by gjb at August 4, 2003 2:17 PMoops. Tags were stripped, but you get the idea.
Posted by gjb at August 4, 2003 2:18 PMI put your brackets back in, G.
Using environment variable matching isn't as slick maybe, but it works fine. It might even be less server overhead since the rewrite engine doesn't have to do it's thing (you're now doing a straight string comparision vs. parsing wildcards and such in rewrite rules and conditions). Since we're on hosted machines, I know that might not seem like a concern, but it could boil down to pages getting back to the visitor that much faster.
One thing you might want to check is if you need to set local_ref for the www.lickmewhereipee.com host as well.
Posted by wee at August 5, 2003 11:54 PMHey... just randomly found the link to the fuck you cake from my friends party...
(leaves to go check server log files for image thieves)
Posted by eric at August 6, 2003 5:50 PMMust have been quite the party, Eric. Let me know how many people you find using the cake pic, eH?
Posted by wee at August 6, 2003 6:03 PMI had the same problem, I overcame it tho by using php and sessions. I would set a session var like $_SESSION['leach'] and if it wasn't set i would return a bad.png pic. To have the var set you have to visit my website, the image must be accessesd like , img.php will return the image from the path ../images outside of the public web directory.
Referer is too unreliable to use, thats why I did it this way.
Posted by geoff at September 12, 2003 1:03 AMoops, stupid thing stuffed up my comment, the url should not be ", img.php", it shoud have been:
<img src="img.php?img=img.jpg">
