TheAgitator.com
Hot Linking May Be Hazardous to Your Website
Wednesday, January 14th, 2009In celebration of a new federal tax on cigars that takes effect today, Action on Smoking Health (ASH), an organization run by anti-smoking zealot John Banzhaf, apparently hotlinked to an image of a cigar hosted by The Stogie Guys, a website run by cigar aficionados Patrick Ashby and Patrick Seemens.
As you might guess, hijinx ensued.
Sweet. Good for the cigar guys.
I don’t smoke, but, good on the Cigar Guys! I am sick to effing death of these damn ‘uplifters’ as Mencken called them.
The breed just will not die off, but has to plague every generation with legally prescribed insanity (like our drug laws). It’s enough to make you think seriously about eugenics…
Wow, that’s a lot nicer than what I did to the last asshat who hotlinked an image off my site.
I hope his friends all enjoyed those pics of Mr. Goatse Man. He’s worked his way up to being able to fit his own fist in his ass. With just a bit more stretching, he’ll get his head in there, and be perfectly suited to a career in politics.
Not sure what would have been better – that or Goatse. Of course, the latter would be great on Ken Blackwell’s page.
Hot-linking hijinx is great. My favorite is still McCain’s myspace incident:
http://www.newsvine.com/_vine/images/users/nws/mike/634672.jpg
Note: murdering BART officer arrested:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/01/13/BAM615A08A.DTL&tsp=1
Holy cow! The ASH site is one of the ugliest sites I’ve ever seen.
Ok, I admit it, I don’t know what hotlinked means.
Anyone care to explain?
scottp,
I’m not sure exactly how it’s done, but it essentially wires the picture hosted from another site to simply show on your site. That means every time somebody requests the page, it makes a request to your site for the picture, saving the hotlinker’s bandwidth and stealing the hotlinkee’s. The only downside (to the hotlinker) is that the person hosting that picture can change the picture and the new picture will show up on their page and they won’t know until somebody tells them. It is normally a great way to make the hotlinker look stupid, unless you are in a forum where it is normally noted as a badge of honor, it seems. I’m not sure on the legality of it.
It’s when you display an image on your website that is hosted on a different site.
Scottp, it’s when an another website simply links to an image stored on your website’s server space, as opposed to saving the image and uploading it to their own server.
The Stogie Guys handled it correctly. A couple of years ago, the Intelligent Design site Uncommon Descent was stealing bandwidth from The New York Observer by using a copyrighted image of Richard Dawkins. I emailed the tech guys and and provided with an image with which to pull the same gag, and they were all for it. Unfortunately, their editor shot them down. Too bad, as it would have been epic.
“It’s enough to make you think seriously about eugenics…”
Nemo, what makes you think THEY’RE not already thinking about it?
Of course, the way this world is going, perhaps what’s going on is actually dysgenics.
Jeezus, if i’m stealing a copyrighted image, at least i’m nice enough to host it on imageshack.
Anyone click on their “moral rearmament pledge” ?
Creepy, creepy, ever so creepy.
Extremely creepy!
One world united in harmony.
With liberty and justice for all (they forgot the line: except for smokers)
I smoke cigars and not cigarettes, the downward spiral because of the Health Nazi’s continue.
You know, I’d probably quit smoking if I didn’t feel the need to keep at it out of spite.
It should also be noted that Mr. Banzhaf has chortled happily over the idea that, as he put it, a ‘man’s home is no longer his castle’.
I’m reminded of the scene in Dr. Zhivago, where the poor doc returns home (after years of involuntary servitude to the socialist thugs of the Red Revolution) to his own house that has several families squatting in it and a low-level zampolit (political officer) type and his equally ugly female colleague who hectors him. That’s where we’re heading if this isn’t stopped. Enough with these self-appointed saviors!
#6 Michael
I must say I am amazed. Thanks for the update
strikefast – I actually started smoking cigars in my 40’s because of these zealots.
what a terribly ugly website!
Awesome way to fight back.
http://www.rightklik.net/
stupid way to hotlink
they’ve replaced the image with a new one…hotlinked from another site. lovely.
Off-topic, but I thought you’d appreciate this, Radley. I’ve cleaned out the citations.
From Herring v. United States, Ginsberg’s dissent, in a footnote:
Did Ginsburg actually write that herself? If so, I’m impressed. I don’t think of her as having such wisdom.
If taxes on tobacco support children’s programs, then it is a moral imperative that we smoke. After all, it’s for The Children!
Thanks to all who replied to my question.
I’m a pipe and cigar smoker and thanks to this site I’ve become an avid snus user. That being said the article linked above in the comments where Banzhaf said that a man’s home is no longer his castle, presents an interesting question. I don’t smoke in my own home and if I was unfortunate enough to live in a common wall living arrangement and the neighbors smoked so heavily that the smell permeated my place, that seems like a violation of my property rights. Although, I can’t imagine that a judge would have made the same decision if the neighbors were pickling beets every night although to my mind it is the exact same trespass.
[...] Students for Liberty for the story, and Radley Balko for the screengrab. Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)Quickly embed an image without [...]
[...] over at Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) decided to hotlink to a StogieGuys.com image. Rookie mistake. As a result, we made the graphic to the right appear on ASH’s homepage for over 12 hours [...]