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December 18, 2003
Thief!
I have discovered somebody stealing my bandwidth. Yes - someone recently visited these pages - maybe arrived here from Google - and liked one of the pictures in my blog so much that he decided to steal it. Hey - I have no problem with that because I "stole" the picture in the first place too. But since this blog forms a work of "art" - then I don't feel guilty about that. At least I had the decency of copying the picture to my own webserver. Anyway - some guy called Jared - who appears to be an overseas student studying at London School of Economics on some typical-for-LSE loony-left-style undergraduate psychology course decided that instead of copying the picture onto his own webserver - he decides to simply "refer" to the picture so that it is served up by MY webserver - which means every page impression on HIS blog uses MY bandwidth. That's not respectful. Here is Jared - as featured in his MSN photo album:
Jared: Overseas student who is guilty of disrespectfully stealing my bandwidth!
UPDATE: Just in case Jared corrects the problem - thereby leaving you wondering what I did in retribution - below is a copy of the image that he was "referring" to on my webserver instead of copying to onto his own webserver. The image is from a posting I made months ago:
The picture that Jared "stole" my bandwidth for.
This is the image I replaced it with.
Posted by jag at December 18, 2003 06:41 PM
Comments
oh you are just too evil-y cool for words lol, brilliant job on that!
Posted by: Jaina at December 18, 2003 09:35 PM
Cheers Jaina. Yeah - I'm feeling smug. He obviously hasn't noticed yet.
Posted by: Jag at December 18, 2003 09:39 PM
Saw this earlier and since I am not a techie person couldn't figure out how u did it. Nvr mind...reminded me of the poop story outside yr house only this time u have nailed the offender :)
Posted by: Ritu at December 19, 2003 03:04 AM
I wouldn't want to mess with you.
How the hell did you find out? It must be pretty difficult...
Thanx for adding me, man.
Posted by: sat at December 19, 2003 06:39 AM
Ritu: yes - he is well and truly nailed! I am teaching him to behave decently and respectfully whilst in UK.
Basically: if you go to Jared's page you wil notice that his website his being hosted on the "Xanga domain". Now right-click on the UK flag in the top-left corner of his page - and then select "properties" - you can see that the URL of the UK flag image is also hosted in the Xanga domain. Now go to "hacked" image of mine on his page - and do a right-click properties on that: you will notice that the URL of the image is Route79 - in other instead of saving the image he liked so much onto his PC - and then uploading it to his Xanga domain - he is simply "linking" to the picture which is located in my Route79 domain. Which means that every time somebody loads his home page - that image is being served up by my webserver/host - which is NOT good netiquette. Of course, what he has probably failed to appreciate is that since the image that is being served is in MY total control - I can do anything I like with it! Anyway - I have noticed that many of the images in is blog are simply "referred" images rather than images that he uploaded to his Xanga account. He appears to have a bad habit that needs correcting! :-)
Sat: I spotted it because I do occasionally scan my webserver logs - and I spotted what looked like strange recurrent entry in the logs: where the browser was getting that particular image - but not any of the rest of the page that the image was originally in. This is a sure sign of someone wo is "image linking".
Posted by: Jag at December 19, 2003 08:09 AM
well done! that'll teach him...
Posted by: stephane at December 19, 2003 09:41 AM
Well done Jag! I'm sure he won't mess around in future.. :))
Posted by: Chakra at December 19, 2003 10:15 AM
But dont we refer images a lot, for example, all the "thanks to" buttons etc. Sure, I accept that it is not good netiquette - I put up most of my images on my departmental computer facility login. But I am wondering where that will all go when I lose the account next year.
Posted by: sat at December 19, 2003 12:22 PM
Hey Jag, this is really cool! But Jared doesn't seem to have noticed uptil now :)
Posted by: Anita at December 19, 2003 02:05 PM
Jag: Also let me know where I can email you. Needed some help from you...
Posted by: Anita at December 19, 2003 02:09 PM
Sat: yes - linking/referring to images like buttons and icons etc. is indeed a common practise where the person who is providing the button or icon is providing a "service" of some sort - e.g. search engines, ad banners etc. - but my image archive is *not* a service I am providing. At least I don't think I've ever offered it as a service as such. I would be much happier if Jared simply copied the image - that way he wouldn't be using my hosting facility and bandwidth (which I have paid for) to serve up his pages. The only "service" I am offering is for people to display my pages with the images and objects in the context of my pages.
Anita: Yes - he hasn't noticed yet - perhaps I should chaneg the image to something more corrupting!
Anita: best to get me on jag@o2.co.uk
Posted by: Jag at December 19, 2003 04:58 PM
Nailed him alright. But I'm sure now more people are visiting his blog than ever before, because of you link, thereby pulling more off your server ;)
I have to admit, I have once or twice indulged in this sort of plagiarism. Now I'll think twice!
Posted by: Anand at December 19, 2003 06:43 PM
Maybe you can check out the adventures of the Piratic Plogger http://yardboy.blogspot.com/
Posted by: Anand at December 19, 2003 06:48 PM
Hot image linking is a big crime in the blogging world. I have to watch my steps now.
Thanks for linking me. I think you missed the "e" in spelling my blog name. It should be "Aderemi" as opposed to "Adremi". I just thought I let you know.
Posted by: Remi at December 20, 2003 12:10 AM
Hi Remi - oops - thanks for the spelling correction. Fixing it now ..
Posted by: Jag at December 20, 2003 10:23 AM
Sheer genius :-)
He has been owned!
Posted by: James at December 21, 2003 02:52 PM
Seen something similar at http://www.cockeyed.com/pranks/imposter/imposter.html
He's a little nastier than you though...
Posted by: James at December 22, 2003 07:15 PM
Hi James - yes that guy is nastier than I. Funny though! Anyway - it looks like Jared got the message - he seems to have removed the bandwidth-stealing picture! Heh heh - feeling good about that ...
Posted by: Jag at December 22, 2003 08:27 PM
Now if we see him on the tube we can all laugh, point and jeer :-)
Posted by: James at December 23, 2003 06:33 AM