(no subject)

[ewx]

Someone has started using this image as their icon on some dutch web bulletin board. This has produced around 160Mbyte of outgoing traffic in 28 days, all of it paid for by a friend of mine (though I'd be as annoyed if it were me paying for it).

I'm open to suggestions as to what I should change the image to say.

Comments

[mobbsy.livejournal.com]

Given the person paying for the bandwidth speaks Dutch, maybe they've got a good suggestion? :-)

[rillaith.livejournal.com]

"Please contact the owner of this site to acquire your own copy of this image" ;)

[saraphale.livejournal.com]

That's basically what I put in an image when someone did this exact same thing to me. The traffic usage wasn't as bad in my case, but it's still annoying.

[rillaith.livejournal.com]

Or a single pixel, 2-bit gif to minimise the bandwidth effects, and a post on wherever the referrers are coming from saying Oy! Whoever was using this image, eff off and use your own bandwidth!

[ewx.livejournal.com]

It's actually a PNG, which is significant for bandwidth minimization: PNG's compression system has even more scope than GIF for a very small file expanding into an exceptionally large image. This would be kind of unfair on all the innocent people reading the relevant pages, though...

[reddragdiva]

I suppose you've considered goatse.cx and tubgirl.

[davefish.livejournal.com]

Could it be set up so that there is a one in 10 chance (say) that you get an entirely different image. This could be as innocent (or not) as you choose, and if it only happened occasionally they might have fun trying to work out what was going on for a while before they gave up?

[pjc50.livejournal.com]

goatse.cx is traditional in this situation; alternatively, if it's on a web BB, change it to a 1x20,000 pixel image. This will annoy ALL THE OTHER USERS into forcing him to change it. Up to you whether you want it to be horizontal or vertical - horizontal scrolling is more annoying, vertical breaks up the page into isolated islands of text.

[kensei.livejournal.com]

I found someone was using an image on my web server, so I changed it to something that was quick to load, but made the point quite effectively. (http://www.lacunae.org/images/bender.gif)

Feel free to copy it and use it :)

[mst3kgirl.livejournal.com]

ooh, I like that. :-)

[(Anonymous)]

Except the point it makes isn't the point we want to be making; people should be free to link to web pages without having to ask permission. It's when you inline other people's content that there's a potential bandwidth and copyright problem.

(S)

[kensei.livejournal.com]

That's an interesting point of view and I'm intrigued as to your definition of inlining content vs linking to web pages. I quite agree that people should be able to link to web pages without having to ask permission (of course, one hopes people are intelligent enough to link to static content, rather than dynamically generated pages which may disappear without warning).

The point about the above link (which I gave in an href, rather than an img src) is that it was a replacement for a picture which I was using in my web pages at lacunae.org - content if you will. People were linking to that image directly, rather than copying it and using it. I therefore replaced the picture I had with the one in the link above, and checked to make sure the people inlining it had their web pages suitably disrupted.

Hope thats clearer now.

[gerald_duck]

Then again, a lot of people would prefer that you didn't copy their work, but are fine with it being linked to, even inline.

I think the only solution is to consider things on a case-by-case basis, applying common sense.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Inlining is a subset of linking, and if we object to (unauthorized) inlining but not to other kinds of linking, there is an obvious wrong word to use when we express that objection.

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

Have you deleted it now?

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

Ah, *that's* what you've done. Have you got a link to the guy using it so we can judge the reaction?