How I learned to stop worrying and love bandwidth theft.

[brainshrub]

Today we are going to talk about Bandwidth Theft and how to make it work for you.

Bandwidth Theft (aka "Inline linking" or "leeching") is when a someone posts media on the web that uses the bandwidth and hosting services of an unwilling party.

For example, if you right-clicked on the picture at the top of this post and looked at its properties, you would notice the following URL address: http/ /www.brainshrub. com/media/pictures/tips-political-bloggers.jpg

The owner of the domain (In this case, me.) is the one who foots the bill for hosting this particular image. By simply copy-and-pasting the URL into an IMG tag, you could post this blue banner onto your blog, and I'd be stuck paying for the privilege.

To illustrate how easy this is to do: Right-click the wine-glass and look at its properties. Notice that the source of the image is coming from athomeasheville.com. I am, in effect, "stealing" that blog's bandwidth.*

The reason most webmasters and bloggers don't appreciate media-leeching is because it potentially slows down the original site, and bandwidth costs money.

There are a number of different strategies to deal with bandwidth theft. If the webmistress of athomeasheville.com objected that I was using the picture, she could tell her server to block all requests for media that are not coming from her own site. Or, she could simply change the name of the image and then the wine-glass would show up as a broken link here at DemocraticUnderground.

Still another strategy is to host your images on a free 3rd party service such Flickr or Photobucket. In that case, you may not need to worry about the cost of bandwidth at all.

However, I have learned that you can harness the power of rude web-surfers to increase your site traffic and blog-brand: The secret is to create a watermark for pictures you host on your site.

If you look through Brainshrub.com, you will notice that most pictures have a watermark and a dark blue border.

By doing this, anytime someone takes a picture from this site to post on their own blog or forum, whether they use my bandwidth or not, I am getting low-cost advertising.

Don't get me wrong: I would MUCH prefer that people would not engage in bandwidth theft. But since I can't stop people from taking my images and posting them around the net, I might as well profit from the practice.

Watermarks are easy to generate and customize in Photoshop. Simply create a text layer with your site's name, then tweak the blending options by right-clicking on the "layers palette" with the text:



Warning: Never put a watermark on an image that you do not own the copyright to or is not part of the creative commons. If you absolutely must do this, place it next to your own comments and not on the picture itself. You shouldn't be posting copyrighted media on your blog to start with, however this is a legal gray area on the blogosphere that we'll talk about in another post.

Another benefit of bandwidth theft is that it gives you an opportunity to punish people who take your images out of context.

For example, a year ago a poster from the conservative website FreeRepublic.com took an image from my photo album to "prove" that Andy Stephenson was exaggerating his illness. (Most DUers know what happened, but if you don't here are more details on the Stephenson story.)

At first I was upset, but then I got creative and added some text to the image:

Dear Freepers, Andy's disease came on suddenly. This picture, taken 01/20/2005, cannot be used as a tool for diagnosing illness anymore than a heavily edited video can diagnose brain death. Peace be to you all. Brainshrub.

Since the editing period had passed on that forum, there was nothing the bandwidth-thief could do short of asking the FreeRepublic moderators to remove the whole post.

In conclusion, bandwidth theft is annoying - but by adding a watermark you can promote your site and increase your site traffic.

* I got permission from www.athomeasheville.com to do this, so I guess it isn't really stealing - but you get the idea.

This article was cross-posted from here.

[Time for change]

1. Thank you for this useful information

I'll have to figure out how to use it later.

[AndyA]

2. I get this a lot with eBay auctions.

I call it "hotlinking images." Once, someone had linked to photos of a car I have on a website. They were attempting to sell their car on eBay, and posted these photos to "show people what the car would like like all fixed up." It really wasn't clear that the photos weren't of the car being sold, and I contacted the seller asking them to remove the photos. They said they couldn't because someone had already bid on the car, and that prevented them from editing the photos out of the auction.

They went on to say that eBay would only allow them to cancel the auction completely, and start it over again, after paying another fee to eBay. So, it would cost them money.

Needless to say, at this point I was getting angry, because it was COSTING ME MONEY to load those images, of which they used 12, every time that eBay page loaded.

So, I changed the images. All of them. One said: "WARNING! FLOOD CAR - DO NOT BUY!!" another said "FREE SHIPPING WORLDWIDE!" (it's expensive to ship a car...) another said "THIS SELLER IS STEALING BANDWIDTH - CAN YOU REALLY TRUST THEM ENOUGH TO BUY A CAR?"

The auction was removed within hours, although my server kept serving images to that page weeks later. I think someone must have thought it was funny, and posted a link to the auction.

[Asgaya Dihi]

6. Good way to deal with it

The idea of adding advertising or a watermark as suggested in the first post is also a good one but I've seen something similar to what you describe used. A video web site that I used to drop by I'd guess borrowed their links from others, some who weren't happy about it. When he didn't stop they replaced the images with ones that shouted "Hey Hoover! Stop stealing my bandwidth!" I haven't seen one in quite a while now, I'd guess the point got through.

If they won't listen because it's right, maybe they will because you control the pics or videos rather than them.

[diamondsndust]

3. excellent post, brainshrub...

I have a feeling that many people don't realize that they are stealing though. Personally, I don't worry about it at all because my hosting comes with 5 GB of storage and 250 GB of transfer... for only $3.99 per month... which I was told would handle about 5 million hits per month.

I like the idea of the watermark though. I'm just learning how to use paintshop pro and animation factory (teaching myself through trial and error), so this is something I will check in to.

[brainshrub]

5. Trail and error

That's how I learned photoshop.

Even after a year of experimenting with Photoshop, I only understand about 10% of what the program can do.

[dalaigh lllama]

15. Ok, luddite here

I have a bad feeling that I might be one of those ignorant bandwidth thieves.:blush:
Can you tell me (in simple idiot-proof language) how you should take a picture from one site to post on another?

[brainshrub]

16. Get a Photobucket account for yourself.

http://photobucket.com/

When you see an image you want to post on DU, dump it into Photobucket then link to that URL.

[dalaigh lllama]

23. Thanks. I'll go ther and get "edicated" n/t

[MrPrax]

4. I hit the recommend...

and why not, there are some important and great tips here for folks that like posting content...

One can also cut down on 'leeching' (assuming that the intent of the page is simply an excuse to post pictures of course) by using 'off' formats like .png as the extension is rejected by forum handlers.

Right-Clicking blocking Java Scripts that make it difficult to find the URL or have the photos directed from the CGI bin that uses pop-up windows.

But both can be problematic depending on the skill level.

One use very large pictures and then set the horizontal and vertical sizes to constrain it on the web page--again the receiving site will in many cases have a size limiting script and auto-block large jpegs. This forces the 'leecher' to re-sample the pix and post it on a photo hosting site.

Moreover, folks could if they have a all you can eat broadband with a static IP can host pictures themselves...but that can be complicated setting up a web server.

It's an important topic actually because people like their pictures, but for many progressive sites, they must foot the bill for that too kewl photoshopped Bush pix and as such they got to hit up their members for more and more donations to pay for it.

[Cronus Protagonist]

7. Any liberal can link to any of my images any time

http://bushspeaks.com

Link away, no theft involved.

:evilgrin:

[slestak]

8. Good advice k&r

Here's a link that explains how to lock down all your images using an .htaccess file.

http://www.thesitewizard.com/archive/bandwidththeft.shtml

[troubleinwinter]

9. The Scamdy scums linked to a photo I had

of Andy and a friend, so I REPLACED the original photo, using the SAME URL tag with this graphic:

(this is an actual screen shot of it showing up on THEIR site! This showed up in one of THEIR posts... I did not post it.)

[brainshrub]

11. Yeah, they really hit low.

I understand politics can be dirty business, but what they did was flat-out dishonorable.

To kick a man while he is dying of cancer is pathetic.

If the founder of Scamdy ever gets diagnosed with cancer, and he needs help - I plan to make a large donation in Andy's name. In this way, he will know that the power of forgiveness and love trumps hate.

IMHO, Scamdy was an organized campaign to cripple internet fund-rainsing for Liberal causes.

[troubleinwinter]

12. To cripple internet fundraising for liberal causes

and also likely to smear his name in order to attempt to discredit election reform efforts.

[troubleinwinter]

10. I look forward to your discussion on Copyright.

It is an interesting issue. I managed to get the Scamdys' site shut down for a week or two, due to copyright infringement of a photo.

[SidDithers]

13. Thanks for posting this...

If I see a photo I want to use in a post, I drop it into my photobucket account first, and then use the photobucket link. It's really easy to do. :)

Sid

[DarkTirade]

14. Changing the picture is a fun way of doing it.

I saw something where someone stole an entire webpage from someone else, just changed the names on there. But he didn't bother to change the links, they were all pointing at the pictures on the original page. So, of course, he just changed those pictures to large colorful text announcing said theft. :)

[blogslut]

17. Yep

I know this from my business. internet porn. Creative marketing!

[brainshrub]

20. Are there things you've learned in the internet porn industry

that would be valuable to political sites?

[blogslut]

21. shucks, you don't want

my cooties.

Just the same, as you first wrote, a little hotlinking can be a good thing if you apply a watermark to your image. A couple of other simple tips:

1) Go blog. Search engines love blogs.

2) Host your blog or page on a paid server with your own domain. Free hosts are unreliable and a paid host/leased domain looks more professional. Plus, you can host your own images when you want to post pics on DU :)

[brainshrub]

22. I now have a radio show

called "Tips for Political Bloggers." It airs on Mondays on WPVM in Asheville, NC.

I'm still new to radio, but once I have a better grasp on what I'm doing, I'd like to interview you for the show on the topic of how purveyors of porn can teach political bloggers.

Would you be interested in being interviewed?

[blogslut]

24. Let me know

when you have that going. We'll see ;)

[Generic Other]

18. That was really a great tutorial, Brainshrub

Very clear explanation.

[jberryhill]

19. Shameless Plug For Artists Against 419

Those interested in creative bandwidth theft, and who would like to fight internet fraud, might check out the "Lad Vampire" at aa419.org, which coordinates bandwidth leeching from fake bank and other financial fraud related sites.

[brainshrub]

25. I like that!

Great plug.