(no subject)

[theweaselking]

Man goatses a hundred thousand myspace users through the simple expedient of replacing the image they are hotlinking from his server.

Hilarity ensues.

Page is work-safe. Click not on the images he links to unless you're sure you want to see them and won't get fired.

Comments

[thathatedguy.livejournal.com]

Hilarity indeed!

[tsunami-ryuu.livejournal.com]

See, I've always figured that if anyone ever directly links to my art/other web content and leeches bandwidth, I'll replace the image-in-question with some kind of macro.

Goatse is an excellent choice in this guy's case. He may have just prompted the largest mass-goatseing on record.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

If I ever start caring, I can easily set things up to automatically display a different image to hotlinkers than it shows to legit views.

But then you wouldn't get that kind of mass adoption of the image before the switchover.

[tsunami-ryuu.livejournal.com]

Nice! I've seen some sites employ that method to deter bandwidth theft. What all goes into coding/hosting for that? My website-managing and HTML-writing skills are extremely limited (i.e. I fail at computer languages), so I'd be stuck with the simple "reupload image with the same filename, hurr" tactic if anything happened to make me actually care about my stuff being leeched.

Truth be told, I'm lax about people reusing my web stuff. I just kind of want an excuse to inflict stupid macros on unsuspecting people. Jason Scott's opportunity was of epic proportion, and I must say he made good use of it.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

http://www.javascriptkit.com/howto/htaccess10.shtml

So it's 3 lines of code in a plain text file in the web directory, assuming that the server is set up to allow it.

It's easy. It's really, really easy.

[tsunami-ryuu.livejournal.com]

Awesome-- despite my fear of JavaScript, that's simple enough for me to understand.

Thanks for the link. If/when I ever get my personal site up and running, I'll try my hand at .htaccess.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

That's not actually javascript. That's straight Apache instructions. The site just happens to focus on javascript in other places.

[tsunami-ryuu.livejournal.com]

See, I just demonstrated my utter cluelessness.

Again, many thanks for all the help with That Web Stuff I Embarassingly Suck At. :)

[missysedai.livejournal.com]

I'm vastly amused by the commenters who are bitching him out about this major pwnage. "What about the CHIIIILLLLLDRRRRRRRUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUNNNNNNNN???"

Well, shit. If I can teach my carpet mice that hotlinking is likely to get you some unpleasantness, surely others can do the same. (Also, what sane person lets their kids on MySpace? The place is a shithole!)

[dscotton.livejournal.com]

The problem is that you get exposed to it not just if you're an idiot, but if you look at a page that belongs to an idiot... something that's pretty hard to avoid doing on the internet.

[torrain.livejournal.com]

As far as I can tell, it's not that difficult. (Admittedly, I tend to either already know where I'm going or put a site:*.edu filter in my Google searches, but I can't believe it's that hard.)

[allysonsedai.livejournal.com]

My day is now substantially brighter.

[zenten.livejournal.com]

Not to be a pain or anything, but you do get permission before you do your own hotlinking, right?

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

In general, I hotlink only from sites that specifically allow it, and, when possible, I ask the artist their preference.

The problem is, hotlinking is not illegal, not even if you call it "bandwidth theft". Taking your image and uploading it to my server to take the load off of you *is* illegal in many cases, although I know only a few artists who care about free advertising more than they care about bandwidth costs.

[smashingstars.livejournal.com]

I would suspect the site that used images from Jason's archives -- without permission and while hotlinking -- was indeed engaging in illegal activity. They were selling these images as their own, and using someone else's bandwidth, all to make a profit. That someone from the layout website became indignant with Jason is beyond belief.

[heraldofchaos.livejournal.com]

that....

is too awsum for words.

[jirel.livejournal.com]

I on the other hand am currently hosting images for a small message board that people hotlink too all the time. The avatars for the message board are screwed up, I have tons of bandwith going to waste every month so I stuck the images out on it and told everyone to help themselves. I keep an eye on the bandwidth at least once a month but so far its minimal, but then the images are pretty specific to the game.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

You could also set it so that only that board could hotlink your images, and everyone else would get nothing.

[falconwarrior.livejournal.com]

This news brings me happiness, and I thank you.

[mcfnord.livejournal.com]

i can reach hundreds of thousands with with an image. but that image? why bother.

[matgb]

I had an advantage, my first net access was at college, and limted to email, newsgroups and very limited surfing. So despite it being '99 and post the web explosion, I got my own little September with a lot of help and pointers.

But yeah, that guy has pretty much the right approach. And for the site that designed the layouts to not understand the dangers of hotlinking and complain when it happens?

So. Very. Stupid.

I mean, most of my bandwidth is me hotlinking to my own images off site (like my Myspace profile), and I barely scratch my allowance; if you've got a domain and are selling designs, then you're so very dim.

Cool.

[itlandm.livejournal.com]

Given the context, I would have made a picture of cuddly angels on a flowery background with plenty of pink. Now that would shock the goths to the core and bring eternal disgrace on their sensitive young souls. "Mysterious wave of suicides linked to MySpace!"