Bandwidth Thieves - and what to do against them

You are here because you are interested in Bandwidth Theft Presumably you are a Webmaster who discovered that someone somewhere in Cyberspace has not only published your copyright protected work without proper authorization, no, he did this while still using your very own server! In other words: you are probably paying for this persons web presence. Which is not a good idea. Bandwidth thieves may have a severe impact on your site At Zanzig.com, for example, I am seeing a lot of "non-users", that are users who request pictures without seeing any HTML document. They are using my site out-of-context, and I am seeing no benefit from this, just cost. And, boy, they are consuming a lot of bandwidth: Let's assume an average of 4,000 "non-users", who each request 3 images at 100 KB. Not much you say? Oooops. 4,000 x 3 x 100 KB = 1,200,000 KB or 1.2 GB. If your hosting tariff includes 3 GB of traffic, you are giving away 40% of your bandwidth to these people - without seeing any benefit from it! Maybe you say, "I don't care. The remaining bandwidth is enough for the honest visitors". That's okay, until you get listed on Google as #1, and your honest visitors are piling up in front of the building, consuming the remaining bandwidth really fast. Then -if you are lucky- you just get to pay the exceeding bandwidth to your ISP. Or -heaven help!- your ISP shuts down the site until next month, denying service to the honest visitors (and the thieves). Now you are wondering what to do about it? There are technical solutions, and the thieves do not get tired of mentioning this, like one mail I received from a crapmaster: "It is in fact quite easy to protect your images from being hotlinked, just do a Google search with 'prevent hotlinking images htaccess' and you'll find whatever you need to prevent this from happening in the future." My reply: "It is in fact quite easy to protect yourself from becoming a criminal, just stop hotlinking images from your crap site and your crap forum." But seriously, there is the option of modifying the .htaccess file, but this has its drawbacks. First of all, maybe you want to allow hotlinking on a case-by-case base? Maybe you don't want to lock-out users who are not presenting a referer in their page request? Maybe you don't have access to .htaccess? Obviously, the thieves and those who support them want to distract from the key point: THEY are breaking the law by stealing your bandwidth and content or by offering a platform that allows this. So why should I bother with looking for solutions to prevent hotlinking from my site? They are breaking the law. Some webmasters make fun of the thief, some put the thieves on display by exchanging the hotlinked images. While this is in fact very funny and remotely satisfying, it is a lot of work. Also, as you start to constantly shuffe around your content, you clutter up your web site which may cause mistakes and may result in a broken site. Here's what I do: I look up the offending site on WHOIS, then send a not so nice e-mail to the registrant telling them I know who they are, where they are, and what they do. I copy the Admin contact on it if this is a different person. This mail will scare them. Big time. Usually the thieves come from online discussion forums and blogs, and they can only look good by stealing your content. They won't admit it, but deep in their heart they know it. People usually come because the pictures are cool, not because the text is a good read. At the end of the day, a picture says more than 1,000 words. And now you are threatening to shut down their crappy little web site and get a few thousand Dollars from them, plus the cost for the lawsuit and the lawyers. No, this is not fun to them any more - this is a real threat! You will receive some hate-mail (see below), but they will react immediately and pull any images off the site, believe me. If they care about their little crap site, they will do it, because they know that you are right. :-) Let's do the math One extremely stupid person hotlinked 19 full-size images from my site (see below). Now, usually I charge 80 Euro per image (bulk rate), that is: 1,520 Euro. Plus 100% penalty for not asking permission: another 1,520 Euro. Bandwidth comes in at cheap 60 Euro. Travel cost for me to the court case: 1,500 Euro. Revenue loss back home: another 1,500 Euro. The service provider denied service to my paying customers, ouch! Another 3,000 Euro. In total: 9,100 Euro. Hmmm. I would sue for 15,000 Euros and settle at 11,000. Uh, forgot the lawyers, sorry: add 4,000 Euro, please, totaling 15,000 Euros. That means roughly 18,000 US$ or 23,500 CAN$, which is still cheap compared to commercial images. What are you saying? The thief might have to sell his car to pay that much? I don't care. When was the last time you cared about the well-being of thieves? The legal case looks excellent for you If you are wondering whether you have any right to do this: You have! For example, the United States 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decided that a search engines' use of thumbnail images is a fair use and not an infringement of copyright. However, if the search engine offers visitors access to the full-sized image that visitors can download without visiting the original site, that may be a copyright violation. Read all the details at Netcopyrightlaw.com. Always remember: the law is on your side! And now I wish you good luck (and a good deal of fun) on your crusade against bandwidth thieves. Below you find a selection of scum, disgusting thieves I encountered on Zanzig.com.

HOTLINKING HALL OF SHAME

A forum full of thieves, from Vancouver, Canada This Canadian "skyscraper" site is full of copyright protected material. One of their users had the brilliant idea of hotlinking 19 full-size images from my site. This alone resulted in 114 MB bandwidth theft in two days (i.e. a whopping 1.7 GB per month). The site operators obviously know what they are doing, because their FAQ states clearly: "If you are a photographer or webmaster concerned about people posting images in our forum that come from your website ("hot-linking") we will remove your images, please contact us. Tell us exactly which thread in the forum your images appear (send us the URL of the thread). Be advised that we have in no way copied your images, we have only told our visitors internet browser the location of your images, the same as when they visit your actual website." Which is actually not true: At Zanzig.com the pictures are presented in the correct context, on their site they are not only stolen, but out-of-context. Another crap forum, from Rotterdam, Holland Another skyscraper site, this time from Holland, again full of copyright infringement. Here, I discovered more than 50 hotlinked full-sized images from my site. By the way, the same stupid person posted the same 19 pictures mentioned above here as well. He calls himself an "expert" in this forum. An expert for what? Stealing images? Stock trader thieves, from Düsseldorf, Germany Stock traders are too important to be held responsible for being online thieves. These yuppies had tons of copyright protected material on their site, including one of my pix. They posted the stuff to ease the boringness of their day-to-day lives, not caring that they break the law every single time they use a stolen image. Disgusting. A self-acclaimed "author", from Brazil This author from Brazil wrote a nice article about his new years resolutions for 2004. Apparently, "not stealing images any longer" was not on his list, and another 92 MB were down the drain until I stopped him. Funnily enough, he is very concerned about his copyrights, though: "Todos os direitos reservados. É proibida a reprodução de qualquer texto deste site sem a autorização do seu autor!" Aha. Heavy Metal thieves, hosted in Irvine, California, U.S.A. They obviously even do not get a domain name any longer, because they use just an IP address as base address for their forum. Don't they know that you can look up IP addresses as well? Anyway, I put a nice 404 on the hotlinked image. An underground thief, from Augusta, Georgia, U.S.A. Another forum, another platform for thieves. These guys, it seems, are very concerned about their bandwidth: this site protects their own content against hotlinking! Wow! I get a 404 when trying to access links directly. But if you enter the forum from the entry page, you see that the images are still there. Clever, but still illegal. Update: The crapmaster himself replied to me: "Thank you for informing me that your unsightly pictures are posted on my site. Now that I see them, I will gladly remove such unprofessional photography. Have a nice day, and learn how to disable hot linking on your website. By the way, my website is non-profit, and we receive no money whatsoever. Try asking people nicely next time." Asking nicely? I wish I would have been asked at all for permission to use my pictures. And hey, if you are not even earning money from all this, isn't it a very stupid idea to get into legal trouble? Another blog fool, from Brazil Blogs - what a nice invention: Give people a public diary and let them post whatever they want. Copyright? Who cares about copyright? It's the traffic that counts! This is one of those sites. So I found one of my pictures next to images from: Magnum Photos (!), Masters-of-photography.com, Entertainmentgalleries.com, Garfield.com, and The Slate. Now, this makes me feel proud! Update: I complained to the fool's host and they replied with "NOTE: While we make every effort to answer all requests that come in, paying users are given priority." I don't care. If you do not want to react, just wait for the attorneys... A free republic full of thieves, from Cork, Ireland Don't get me wrong: I like the Irish. They have excellent beers, fantastic nature, and a good sense of humour. Even when they are running online forums: "We do not take responsibility for anything posted on this noticeboard. It is up to the user to enter their own name, therefore it cannot be guaranteed that the name specified is the actual author's name or email." Except, er, you have been programming and using the scripts, you are running the servers, you could have disabled images, and you are earning money from the traffic. I don't see how you could not be responsible for this? Scum. A gothic thief, from Vermont, U.S.A. And now it's getting really dark. Four pictures, posted November 2003, from a 19 year old insomniac gothic chick who is in college, claiming to be an art major. Whoa! Give me a break please! As an art major, she needs to steal my pictures? That's soo pathetic. And then she put's the real threat on the table: "I'm a great friend, but don't ever get on my bad side. If you double-cross me in anyway I will make your existence on this earth as miserable as possible." Uhhh, now I'm really scared. Wait till my lawyers talk to you. After that, who will be miserable? ;-) The Uninformed Thieves, from Long Beach, U.S.A. Now, here is a puzzle for you. These thieves made a mistake on their website, and maybe you can spot it: "All information and content contained within this website are copyrighted and the property of [the thieves]. By accessing this website you agree not to copy or distribute any material contained herein without prior written consent. Doing so would be a violation of international copyright laws and treaty provision." Now, can you spot the mistake? Bingo! One of my photos appeared on their website, and it is copyrighted by me, not by them. And it is the property of me, not them. I did not agree its distribution, and this is indeed a violation of international copyright laws. Now, here they are right. For once. Fan-Forum of the SWVLT (Singer With Very Little Talent), from Merseyside, U.K. This fan site of a wannabe US singer posts one of my pix. Fine. My little letter goes out, and within the hour, the reply is in: "Get a ... life. You should be pleased someone likes your ... photo, which incidentally was clearly watermarked with your copyright - if it is even a legal copyright. It was little more than free publicity for you, but its your choice to be so overzealously protective to be unable to see that. Your loss." Are we in bad mood today? But anyway, guess what? The crapmaster removed the photo immediately! :-)) And now -just for the sake of it- here is someone with a counter-opinion on the object of desire: "[She] is just one of the many jokes of today that shows how far things are slipping. Basically, if you have very little talent, enjoy wearing little clothing, have very little brains and a big ego, you qualify for stardom. She is nothing but a front puppet with an annoying voice and an oversized opinion of herself. It is sick that this pint sized pain in the ass is pulling in millions, by flashing her butt and big teeth, while there are people out there who are actually doing something [serious]." Nuff said. Thieves in a Spanish Forum, from New York, U.S.A. Think of a huge Spanish TV station in the US. Good. Think of a massively visited forum. Good. Think of these Spanish fools grabbing again pictures from my Mexican album without ever having asked. Good. Now try to imagine what kind of bandwidth this uses. Okay. What's the result? Massive! They consumed 20.6% of my bandwidth on a single day. Don't get me wrong: I love the fact that my photos are popular, but I hate not being asked for permission. So I saved the evidence and then pulled the plug by putting nice little red crosses all over their site. My attorney will love this. He likes to earn money, too. :-)