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Copyright and theft of images, bandwidth and members.

Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2007-12-26 21:06:49 - Graham Ellis

Some poor home school kid in the USA just got the sharp end of my tongue .. I had just signed up to a political forum and so had he (he said) and he wrote:

Also I was wondering if you would join my political forum at http://www.xxx.org .(I know this is an advert but it's really hard to get a new board going, and) it's new, and is actually for a senior year homeschool project ... I'm afraid I take a dim view of anyone attempting to steal members in this way. But it's no big deal and I'm more amused that upset.

But there's an irony. Why on earth did I sign up to the Conservative Forum in the first place? Because I found it in a Google search when looking for something on my own site - and I was taken there by one of my own images in use there.



I recognise Silbury Hill. The guy who used the image is a moderator who hadn't even bothered to seek permission, or to copy the file onto his own site - so I'm paying for bandwidth as people view his pages.

I had a theory. By using a MySQL database to hold images and a PHP script to access them, I could add a degree of control to who views my images - a grand theory, but one I have never put to the test; this sort of thing goes on all the time after all. But this is a cheeky violation by someone who should know better. Well ... I've tested it now. The following lines appear in my image script:

if (eregi("conservativesforum",$_SERVER[HTTP_REFERER])) {
  $error = 1;
  $msgs = array("Image STOLEN","From www.wellho.net");
  }

And all the images look fine when viewed from almost anywhere ... but that site on the conservative web site looks like this:



You think I lack charity at Christmas? Perhaps I do, but I really don't see why I should put up with attempted theft of my membership, theft of my copyright material, and theft of my bandwidth. And perhaps I am making a mountain out of a molehill. But I would like to thank both the people involved for giving me an excellent tale to tell today!

Edit to add I seem to have hit a raw nerve - one measure of apology, three measures of vitriol, and I have been banned from the Conservative Forum ... oops! It seems they're having trouble with a troll and don't believe that I found their site by searching for my own domain name. They think I'm actually the troll! I can't see the logic in that when they started the whole thing by nicking my image!