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March 23rd, 2005
Thievery Afoot

Stolen Spring
I replaced the stolen photo with this image. (AJM didn’t like my first version and made me change it to something more polite.)

Spring has sprung and apparently lots of people want to write about it. And some of those people used an image of Mexican plums in bloom that I published three years ago. Although it is not a very good image (since it was taken with the videocamera in the days before my Coolpix 4300), it does come up on the first page of Google Images for Spring.

Now I don’t mind people copying my photographs for their personal use. In fact, I’m flattered. But if you want to use them on your website, you should 1) ask my permission, and 2) give me credit. The photographs on Zanthan Gardens are copyrighted.

What is worse is that there is a net etiquette for using images: copy them to your computer. That is, do not reference my computer in your “img src=” tag. When you do that, you are stealing my bandwidth. If you don’t understand what that means, please read this article on Bandwidth Stealing.

I meant to write to each person individually, but there are a lot of you. All over the world! Again, I’m flattered that you liked my photo. And you probably didn’t mean to steal it. But it is stealing. So please stop.

List of offenders:
* Allegro (a commercial site?)
* 666
* Persian Blog
* labelle_elle06
* PartyPeeps2000.com: Cindrella
* Nexopia: smilie777
* Origo Forum: Marcsy50
* Cafe Sale: LoKi
* My Space: Tom Kennedy
* Japan Today Forum
* Bursting at the Seams

by M Sinclair Stevens

2 Responses to post “Thievery Afoot”

  1. From jenn:
    March 24th, 2005

    Stealing bandwidth sucks. Sorry to hear you’ve been victimized!

    Too many folks out there believe that if it’s on the internet, it must be ‘free’… sigh.

  2. From mstevens:
    March 25th, 2005

    Well my scheme didn’t work. It only attracted more people to the site who wanted to use my photos. To repeat, I don’t mind sharing my photos if you ask me–it’s the bandwidth that’s the real steal.

    So tonight AJM worked some UNIX magic that will hopefully discourage people. If you notice any weird side effects, let me know.