In this case, I have an RSS search for my domain name and this found the hotlinked image.

Hope this helps.

I know that many people simply “copy the image location” because they may not know any better, I didn’t. This was a new concept for me so I am sure others out there are unaware of how bad hotlinking is. The more talk of hotlinking the more people will know and understand what they are doing. My question is how does one find that their images is being hotlinked??

Thanks for letting me know.

Just to let you know when clicking on ‘Tom Raftery’ (two posts up) brings to http://www.tomandpilar.net site which generates 8 virus alerts. All are trojan types. I’ve never came across a website that provoked so many virus alerts – my virus log (within virtual machine) logged first time for two years! You would want to check it out fast.

Virus types:
new[1].htm – VBS/Psyme (Trojan)
fil_mem[1].htm – JS/Exploit-BO.gen (Trojan)
sploit[1].anr – Exploit-ANIfile (Trojan)

Conor D.

And I’ll be honest, I think I may be guilty of the same thing as Noah once or twice in the past. I’d better go check those links to make sure I don’t get flamed too.

Conor – if you remember that posting of that cartoon, you will also remember that it was a particularly well blogged cartoon at the time, making it onto Techmeme and being re-blogged all over. I was one of the few who linked directly back to the source (attribution) and said I would happily take it down, if asked.

John – the title was changed from Noah is a thief to he is a bandwidth stealer – there is a significant difference there, I think. Plus there is an explanatory update at the top of the posting so that will be the first thing anyone reads if they come across the article now.

I’m sure he will be delighted. }:-)

Regards

John

I remember when you did the original post with the cartoon and my first thought was that it was another good un from the New Yorker.

I’ve posted Dilbert cartoons on my blog before and I’ve stated that I am probably committing copyright infringement, just as you are with the original post.

I agree with some of the other commenters- this is way over the top. Maybe it’s the kind of treatment you’d give to a persistent infringer who failed to respond to your emails, but as a first shot across the bows it’s hugely disportionate. From his comments, this Noah guy seems contrite and reasonable, and I think he has a genuine concern about a prospective employer googling his name and coming up with this post- particularly if said employer isn’t all that net literate and doesn’t realise how commonplace this is. Not sure the change of title helps matters much- granted there’s a small difference between calling someone a “thief” and a “stealer”, but this still sounds like a non-retraction retraction to me. How about using your “How not to steal bandwidth” title?

If you’re going to raise an issue about netiquette, you’re not in a very strong position with this cartoon. You stated in your post “I have no idea of the legality of reproducing and editing the said cartoon, so if the owner/creator contacts me I’ll take em off straight away!” but surely the onus is on you to find out, and it shouldn’t have taken you too long. Like all new New Yorker cartoons, licencing rights are held by the New Yorker’s cartoon division, http://www.cartoonbank.com. Their website states that “Images that appeared in The New Yorker cannot be altered in any way. All our images, including those presented on this site, are copyright protected and cannot be used in any way without permission from The Cartoon Bank, a New Yorker Company.” I can’t imagine them charging for use on a personal blog, but if you were licensing this image for commercial use on a not-for profit website for a month, it would cost $200 if your hits were under 25k a month, $240 if over.

Let me just say as well that I generally really like your site, and I’m sorry that my first comment is such a flamer, but this post just got me hot under the collar. Incidentally, you can get that cartoon on a greeting card now too- I’ve one up on my mantlepiece right now.

I don’t understand anything about bandwith either, I’m really really not good at this technical stuff! Arse, I hope I haven’t been doing anything illegal.

I thought calling Noah a thief was a bit OTT to be honest, but like I said I’m ignorant of all things computer-y, so maybe it was stealing.

If you check the top of this post you will see I have changed the title of the post and added an update to the post reflecting this.

John – in fairness, I invited Google to crawl my site and I post for people who read my site. I see no reason why I should be subsidising Noah’s costs.

John (Butler) – John, rightly or wrongly blogging is my preferred method of communication in situations like this. I think had I taken a different approach to my blog post, (more humourous, less bad tempered) people might have been less outraged.

Aidan – Fair point, thanks.