A little birdie today chirped a most disappointing breach of online manners: the blog company called Multiply copied the code that is hosting one of my desktop wallpapers and provided it to a blogger who has a blog through their system. No one emailed me to ask for permission to use this wallpaper or offered to link back to my site. The most troubling part about this issue, however, is how Multiply sees no problem with letting its users steal my bandwidth to host this wallpaper. I'm glad people like the design, but it's not very nice to 1. not ask to use it and 2. use my bandwidth to host it.
Here's a picture of how Multiply is giving away my design without my permission:
The sucky part about this is that if you look real close at that code, which you probably cannot see, they are not only giving away my design without my permission, but they are providing it from my website (versus if they were to host it on their servers), which means that the bandwidth I pay for is now powering my wallpapers to show up on other sites as backgrounds, which is called hotlinking. As flattering as that is, to have my design lifted and used, it's 1. thievery and 2. costing me more money in bandwidth the more people are using my bandwidth for free (aka on my dime). I'm glad they like my designs, yet I would much prefer a request of permission at the very least. It's only polight. Thank goodness I put my copyright and website at the bottom of the design.
A trusty programmer helped and installed hotlink protection onto my site to prevent people from posting images that are not hosted on their sites, but on my site. Otherwise, every time an image displays on their site, that is actually pulling the image from my site, it's my bandwidth that gets sucked.
Rascal, thieving, bastards.
3 comments:
Dang!!!! That's TERRIBLE! Thanks for posting ( I saw your post on TSB warning us all of this abhorrent behavior0 and I am glad to know your Spammy Scammer blog exists! I'm bookmarking you right now while dialing my web people to make sure hotlink protection gets put on my site!!! Whew!!!
That Multiply site is one of the biggest problems I have. Lots of "pattern piggies" over there scanning in crochet patterns to share with random strangers. It's a nightmare.
Erin: Yay! Glad I could bring awareness to the hotlinking. Yeah, get the hotlink protection, and you should be able to say what domains you want to give permission to for posting your photos as hosted from your site - like TSB.
Amie: I hadn't known of Multiply before. Thank goodness for my Google Alert that alerted me. I had it set to my domain so that's how I learned of the poachering. That really stinks for your patterns.
Sites like Multiply make internet living hard. I'm going to try and think of a way to work with people like this. I'm not going to take down my desktop wallpaper. It brings me too much joy to make it, and I like that others can freely download it. But I may try to think of other ways to encourage these people to buy a background properly (b/c desktop wallpaper is not intended as background, so looks kind of funny if posted as such). I know it's most likely a losing battle, but I'll try.
I did send an email to Multiply, but they have not responded yet. It's been one day, and a Saturday at that.
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