Monday, January 4, 2010

Hotlinking and Stealing: Don't Be An Ass

Stealing content is nasty, and just because it happens to a lot of us doesn't make it right. No matter how small or trivial it might be, ripping off content and making it appear as if it's your own writing, from your own site/blog, is wrong, unethical, immoral, and lazy. What's worse is when it's from someone who should know better; a UFO or Bigfoot site/blog, etc. that appears to be valid.

Speaking of asses -- supreme asses -- Atrueoriginal, who brings us daily UFO and paranormal news with her Alien, UFO & the Paranormal Casebook, has been the victim of hotlinking. Hotlinking is not only stealing content, which is bad enough, but often costs the legitimate writer/site owner money. Other victims of this latest theft of content and hard work include Jospeh Capp of UFO Media Matters.

For more on this see Lesley's post on her blog The Debris Field, and be sure to read the comments, many from Atrueoriginal, that further explain what is going on, and what to do about it.

In some ways this is an elephant in the room among UFO, paranormal and Bigfoot, etc. researchers. No one wants to come across like they're a whiny nitpicking nerdling, but when someone rips off your content, no matter how small the item may be, it's stealing, and people who steal shouldn't be allowed to get away with it.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

People also steal images in this way. Some of my photos show up on other people's blogs with no attribution--and certainly without my permission. "Internet" is not synonymous with "public domain."

The irony is that all people have to do is ask me, and be willing to provide proper attribution, and I will let them re-post my stuff. And, yes, it has mainly been other supposed paranormal researchers who stole my stuff.

Lisa A. Shiel
author of Backyard Bigfoot
BackyardPhenomena.com

Atrueoriginall said...

I steal Lisa's pictures all time don't I. hee, hee

But I always make sure the it links to her newest article and I create my own jpg so I'm not using her bandwidth.

People see what I do sometimes and think I'm stealing when in actuality, I'm promoting because their picture speaks tons louder then links. lol

The latest and greatest with my problem is this. Theresa is not returning any of my emails yet - about 12 I think now. Go Daddy is telling me that I cannot ad a source code to my Quickblog because we're not allowed to get into that are. The source code is used in order to break the frame that Theresa has around my blog. And, Go Daddy is telling me that I have to redirect my blog by changing it's IP, which will probably only keep new posts from going into her site but 1,565 pages will remain in her site with the 25,000 pictures.

I'm what's called "screwed" and I'm just sitting here waiting on her next move. I'm writing Word Press but that could take a lot of days.

It's Word Press's fault for allowing people to use those frames on whole websites instead of maybe just a single page. Those frames that they're stealing websites with are available to anyone with a Word Press. Isn't that the pits.

What's worse is BJ - UFO Casebook. His whole damn site is in there. Do you know how many pages he has. woe! That is sickening, absolutely sickening that she would do that to him.

She's got Steve Wagner's complete About.com paranormal website too - also sickening.

What's with her. Here I thought she was this spiritual kind of person - come to find out she's a dang thief. I'm positive she knows about all of the because she did remove the link from her sidebar so she's read my emails - but, it's still on the Internet and still being directed to her site until she removes the frames from her site.

My bandwidth has almost doubled since she uploaded that site and my roll-over on bandwidth isn't until Feb 2 so I'm righteously screwed. If I don't pay the bill no matter how big it gets, they'll pull my site down.

Well, I need a Valium or something lol I'm a mess. I'm so worried about my Visa card sitting at Go Daddy I could cry.

Atrueoriginall said...

This is for your visitors. I am exhausted from responding to people emailing me so I put this together. I'm taking it down in a day or two.

My Paranormal, UFO and Alien Blog in an Alien Website - sounds like a horror movie