A Foul Plot Is Afoot…
the Mortiis playing in my head
I am at such a loss for topics lately. I can’t seem to think of anything to talk about.
OMG! I wrote that, and then thought about looking in my web stats just to see what’s up. I found a few links I hadn’t seen before in my referrals, and one of them was a myspace profile, so I clicked on it, and lo and behold, someone has stolen one of my images! And direct-linked! A THIEF! I sent her a message that gave her the benefit of the doubt (and even gave her a link to a page about why direct-linking is bad, because I’m nice like that), so hopefully this will be resolved soon. This has never happened to me before – I’m almost flattered. She stole this image:
and used it as her obnoxiously loud repeating background. People! Read my tips! No obnoxious repeating backgrounds! Also, if you’ll recall, I made that image by hand. See all the little squares? I had to color each and every one of those and cut them out and paste them down in that order. Maybe if she would have asked, I might have said yes, but just taking it isn’t very nice.
AUGH! I’ve just found another! This time they were only stealing this image (:note:), which is pretty inconsequential bandwidth-wise, but just the same, I DREW IT. And she’s stealing it and my bandwidth. It was some person from Xanga… These free site/journal places are beginning to make me nervous. I guess my site is still under the radar enough that I should be thankful that it’s only happening now, almost four years (or is it three? I never remember) after starting this site. I’ve emailed her too though, with the same helpful link.
Does anybody (Jem? Katy?) have any advice on how to deal with direct-linkers? I’ve never had it happen before, so I’m not sure how nice or how vindictive I should be right off the bat. Like, would replacing the images with ugly lime-green ones that say “I’M A THIEVING THIEF! A STEALER OF IMAGES AND PRECIOUS BANDWIDTH!” be too over-the-top for a first-time offense?
Bonus points to anybody who can name what movie this entry title is from.
File Under: General, Internet, Site Stuff
3 Comments
“Like, would replacing the images with ugly lime-green ones that say “I’M A THIEVING THIEF! A STEALER OF IMAGES AND PRECIOUS BANDWIDTH!†be too over-the-top for a first-time offense?”
No. That is the method to go with. Every time.
Don’t make it too big though, because then you’re wasting your own bandwidth.
I always make 800×600 white images with black extremely offensive text for my direct linkers
Keeping the images simple, even though they are large, keeps the filesize way down so I don’t hog up my own bandwidth 
They have been pretty effective so far!
I usually have the same type of direct-linkers as you – people from myspace or other dumb sites like that. I’m fed up with it, but I can’t completely ban all external linking since I need to link to stuff outside of my site, too. I guess this is one problem that will never be solved.
this is my no-hotlink image. I figured they’d get red Xs anyway if I just removed the image, so why not give them three instead
A long time ago, I did sometimes make the effort of emailing/IMing direct linkers and ‘educating’ them politely, but most of the time the little gits just hotlinked more stuff to piss me off.
Now I have various sites (myspace, xanga, blogspot, forums…) blacklisted in htaccess, which saves me lots of effort