TheAgitator.com
Hotlinking Hi-larity
Thursday, February 14th, 2008Two stories on Reddit this morning about hotlinking. This one is just funny. The other one is a bit long-winded, but gist is that a guy was getting socked on bandwidth because a bunch of MySpacers were hotlinking to his photos. So he replaced one of the more popular files (which MySpacers were using as a background) with the Goatse.cx image. Hilarity ensued.
I’ve actually done something similar. When MySpacers started linking to my photos, I replaced a few of them with gory war photos. Inspired some fun email from outraged MySpacers who thought they were entitled to my photos and my bandwidth.
That first link is funny. The guy obviously has no clue. He’s also about as sharp as the leading edge of a basketball.
Um… are these safe for work?
The second link isn’t functioning for me.
The second link has some speed problems, but it loaded after a while. I guess people still hotlink to the guy’s images…
The 2nd link is PAINFULLY slow to load…but a great read. Be patient…
Second link didn’t work for me, either, but the first one is hilarious. It’s one thing to think it’s ok to hotlink something to a blog that four other people read, but to use a hotlinked image for business purposes is not only rude, it’s also grounds for a lawsuit.
This reminds me of when Senator McCain’s myspace was hotlinking to the Newsvine founder’s blog. You can still see what he changed the image to here:
http://mike.newsvine.com/_news/2007/03/27/633799-hacking-john-mccain
I had the same thing happen with my artwork.
I edited my site rules so that anyone linking to an image got rainbow brite instead of the demon or gargoyle they were trying to use ;)
Wow, that guy switching to the goatse pic is a real prick. Pretty damn unethical on so many levels.
Well, maybe I take that back. He might just yet redeem himself. I posted a comment pointing out the ethics and he didn’t get all defensive.
I hope you are joking Brian. I fail to see the ethical dilema here. Is he not entitled to serve whatever content he wishes, under any filename he wishes, from his OWN website?
Yes, I was serious. Here’s what I posted at his site.
“I have to side with the other wet blankets that posted here. This was sort of setting up a vending machine that hands out free ice cream and depending on ad revenue or just expecting credit for the good will. Then some smucks come along and build a robot that uses your machine and delivers the free ice cream to a bunch of kids. So your response to this is not to make your machine screen out the robots, but instead you lace your ice cream with rat poison. For some reason you think the fact that other people have vending machines labeled “rat poison” that despense the same somehow makes what you did ethical.
As you’ve already admitted the kids who are receiving the ice cream from these arguably corrupt robots are not savy enough to realize what danger they are in if someone were to poison the food supply.
All the kids did is look for “ice cream” in the local paper and there was an ad saying free ice cream was to be had at the location where the robot was distributing it.
When it all comes down to it. You saw the state of affairs and then knowingly, and intent matters, changed the source files around so the kids would be delivered porn. Actually, something that is arguably much worse than porn.”
“Is he not entitled to serve whatever content he wishes, under any filename he wishes, from his OWN website?”
That’s not where the ethical issues reside. A guy who owns a bulldozer and some property has the right to drive it around his property whenever and wherever he wishes.
If however I were to tie a large heavy duty chain from the back of his bulldozer and wrap the other end around a main support beam at the meeting house next door then his options become curtailed. It doesn’t matter why I did it.
Certainly if he didn’t notice the chain and drove his bulldozer around causing the collapse of the building and death of all the people inside then he would not be culpable of murder.
The situation here however is that he does see the chain and does notice the building full of innocent people. Now his option is curtailed. He no longer has the right to drive the dozer anywhere he wishes on his property until he removes the chain.
Jason Scotts reaction to seeing this situation was, “Dumb people, they should not be anywhere near machinery and engineered structures if they don’t know how it works. I know what I’ll do. There is plenty of slack in the chain but if I go out of my way to purposely drive it to the far end of my property the roof will collapse and teach those idiots a lesson.”
Further he expressed distain for the type of people who were in the building at the time. “Damn ignorant Quakers. I’m going to teach them”. He further did not consider the bystanders walking by who will also be crushed by the falling building.
His decision to “goatse” those innocent kids was violation of many general ethical principles.
1) For one thing the myspace kids he planned to and did “punish” were not the actual offenders. The true offenders were at HotFreeLayouts.com.
2) There was no intent on the myspace kids part to trespass against him, they had no idea they were by his own admission
3) The retribution he set up was disproportionate
4) He gave no notice he felt he was wronged
5) He gave no opportunity for corrective action on the part of those he felt wronged by.
6) He acted with admitted malice on his part
7) He purposely exposed not only the myspace members who had used the picture but all the myspace kids who happened to visit their friends sites.
8) He knowingly exposed a bunch of underaged kids to a picture which is by far worse than most pornography. He takes lured pleasure in pointing this out in his article, “ONCE YOU CLICK, YOU CANNOT UNCLICK.”
9) He set ambiguous and vague criteria on who could hotlink in the first place. He says he has not problem with people hotlinking in his article but only apparently up to the point where it becomes too much. Actually his criteria is arbitrary and he admits it.
Here’s what he had to say:
“Others thought that I was brave to allow hotlinking at all.”
“Hotlinking in itself is not so bad, in my book. I certainly get people hotlinking to my textfiles and directories, skipping over my introductions and context to provide others with information that I’m hosting. I even have people link directly to images on the DIGITIZE sub-site to prove a point about catalogs or old computers or so on. But in all these cases, the hotlinking is in the course of providing knowledge. Someone is trying to inform others about a subject and my library is being utilized to share. I feel like this is right and good, and I encourage it.”
“But what is being done by myspace is that this data is not being used for knowledge. It’s being used as decoration. Beyond that, it’s being used for inefficient, meaningless, taste-lacking decoration, just to give someone’s poorly-written “website” a “dark feeling” by putting a visage of death on it. Maybe that’s an odd, arbitrary line to draw, but after being at the ass-end of that line, if you will, I think I have to consider drawing it.”
So how is anybody suppose to know where this line is drawn? If I let people walk on my lawn but then arbitrarily decide that people who where “dark feeling” clothes are not welcome, then I can’t just as arbitrarily fill their ass with some buckshot.
10) He changed the rules of his website arbitrarily, and without notice.
11) He punished people retroactively, even the people from HotFreeLayouts.com were wronged in this sense. If he allows hotlinking at a certain period and the actual hotlinking was served up during that period then he really has no complaint.
12) He set up a moral hazard in the he also judged other peoples trespass on the amount of resources taken, but what he had actually done is set up a “tragedy of the commons” situation. None of the people hotlinking have any way of measuring use by the other hotlinkers, so it’s even worse than a common grazing ground. How can he hold them responsible for using too much when they can’t even tell how much they are using let alone others.
13) He exhibited the intent to harm innocents
14) He took pleasure in harming innocents
15) He denigrated others for their innocent differences, and sought to publicly humilate them for these differences. These differences were not inherently a trespass against him. Their ignorance of technology or enjoyment of certain decorative features in and of itself is not harmful to anyone. He should be circumspect enough to realize that there is plenty of things he doesn’t know and things he likes that others are not interested in.
16) He mocked innocents after harming them.