Best served cold

[thepeopleseason]

After noticing that I had a bandwidth thief about a week ago, who was appropriating the image you see to the left, I mulled over what to do about it. Frankly, bandwidth thievery doesn't really affect me, considering that I've kept my website on the University of Florida's Computer Science Dept. web server for going on ten years now.

Indeed, the image itself is something I found years ago, and I modified slightly to fit in with my pages, so I can't really be all holier-than-thou with the image piracy.

Still, it rather bugs me that someone decided to simply hotlink an image on my site without even bothering to ask--especially when it would have taken no effort at all to download the image and stick it up on some free webspace site somewhere and link to that.

Having ignored it/forgotten about it for about a week, tonight I got the inspiration to rename the file and point the original name to this

Jeez. I'm an asshole.

Comments

[fyrdrakken]

Hotlinking is just rude enough that swapping out the image without mentioning is probably justifiable. Rude, but amusing and appropriate.

[thepeopleseason.livejournal.com]

I think I need to start a collection of hotlink image swaps. Part of me doesn't want to be too offensive with it, but I can't get much more offensive than the current replacement...

The Chinese character for "dumbass" might be a good one.

[fyrdrakken]

I still think the clever response would be to see if the swap to something offensive could be so subtly made that it might take the offender a long time indeed to notice the change. But really blatantly upsetting -- or personally insulting the hotlinker -- also works.

[batnandu.livejournal.com]

I don't get it. You point out how the bandwidth thievery doesn't affect you (it certainly isn't costing you anything), and you seem to be OK with letting someone simply take a copy of the image. What's REALLY pissing you off?

[thepeopleseason.livejournal.com]

It doesn't bother me financially. It doesn't tax my bandwidth. It's bad netiquette. Knowing numerous people online who have had their own bandwidth appropriated, I think it's just not cool.

[batnandu.livejournal.com]

Holier-than-thou/self-righteous on someone else's behalf. Got it. :)

[thepeopleseason.livejournal.com]

Holier-than-thou/self-righteous on someone else's behalf. Got it. :)

Nice effigy of Guy Fawkes you got there.