keith_laban Posted November 5, 2003 Share Posted November 5, 2003 I posted a question here a couple of weeks ago about the unauthorised use of my images and other photographer�s images being hot linked from photo.net without permission.<p>I was rather hoping that there would be some response from the administrators about this abuse of our images and photo.net�s bandwidth, but alas not even a sniff.<p>So I�ll ask again. Are the administrators aware of this abuse and can anything be done about it? Below are links to the two sites in question<p><a href="http://www.xlmz.net/forum/viewthread.php? tid=730&sid=R0Qra4dI">site 1</a><p><a href="http://parssa.motime.com/1064959200">site 2</a><p>Thank you Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gerald_widen Posted November 5, 2003 Share Posted November 5, 2003 Saw a lot of familiar photos there.,especially site 2wo. At least they have good taste. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bobatkins Posted November 5, 2003 Share Posted November 5, 2003 One of the benefits of being a subscriber is that you are allowed to hot link to your images. This is normally blocked for non-subscribers.<p>I guess the downside of this is that other people can also hot link to your images.<p> The question of whether photo.net can do anything about it I'll have to leave to Brian. I'm not sure if we can turn off the hotlink feature for a subscriber (I would hope so), but if that's a feature you don't use then that would stop the problem. I'm also not sure if we can block hotlinks from specific sites or IP addresses.<p>This is certainly a problem and certainly needs addressing, but I don't do any of the system programming, so Brian's the only one who can really give you an answer about technical solutions to this problem.<p>The short term solution would be to delete and reload these images, but you'd lose ratings and comments of course.<p>Complaining to the websites in question can do no harm, though I'm not sure it will do much good either.<p><pre>Domain Name: MOTIME.COM Created on..............: Sat, Mar 09, 2002Expires on..............: Tue, Mar 09, 2004Record last updated on..: Fri, Oct 03, 2003 Administrative Contact:Marco PalombiMarco PalombiViale D'Annunzio, 23Milano, 20146ITPhone: +3928322265Email: marco.palombi@letstv.com Technical Contact, Zone Contact:Register.ComDomain Registrar575 8th Avenue - 11th FloorNew York, NY 10018USPhone: 902-749-2701Fax..: 902-749-5429Email: domain-registrar@register.com</pre>===========================================================<pre>Domain name: xlmz.net Registrant Contact:xuhuihui xu xumo-@163.com13620167111 fax: 0757-6221112nanhai nanhaishifanfs GuangDong 528200CN Administrative Contact:hui xu xumo-@163.com13620167111 fax: 0757-6221112nanhai nanhaishifanfs GuangDong 528200CN Technical Contact:Product Team cs_eservice_cn@lycos-asia.com63605880-350 fax: 63605338Ocean Towers,No.550 East of Yan An RoadShanghai Shanghai 200001CN Billing Contact:Product Team cs_eservice_cn@lycos-asia.com63605880-350 fax: 63605338Ocean Towers,No.550 East of Yan An RoadShanghai Shanghai 200001CN </pre> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dougs Posted November 5, 2003 Share Posted November 5, 2003 the photos are linked, rename them, then reload them with the edit photo area, the links will fail and the people linking your photos will get little white squares w/X's instaed of your photos, they will have to go through the process of re-linking them... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
keith_laban Posted November 5, 2003 Author Share Posted November 5, 2003 Bob, thanks for your reply.<p>As I have my own website I never have the need to hot link to my images on photo.net, so if this could indeed be turned off it would solve my problem. Unfortunately it wouldn�t help the other photographers involved.<p>I understand that if I delete the images and reload them that I would loose the ratings and comments. Frankly I don�t give a damn about the ratings but would hate to loose the comments that many contributors have so kindly made.<p>As this abuse has affected many other photographers, I really feel that ideally the solution needs to come from photo.net if this is possible, so that the problem is solved for all. Certainly blocking hotlinks from specific sites would seem to be the answer if this can be done. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
think27 Posted November 5, 2003 Share Posted November 5, 2003 I looked at both sites. In addition to the fact that they've stolen images from Photo.net without permission -- They have my name listed under an image that isn't even mine!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bobatkins Posted November 5, 2003 Share Posted November 5, 2003 I agree that a technical solution at photo.net would be the best way to deal with this. Unfortunately I don't know enough about the server configuration to tell if this is possible, and if so, how difficult it would be. The simple solution would probably to block any photo.net access from either domain. However that only takes care of those two. I suspect if there are two, there are probably twenty - or even more. And that's only the sites hotlinking. There are probably dozens more who just steal the images and post them on their site. I don't know how many people legitimately use the hotlinking ability and whether it's possible to make that an option which is selectable from a user's workspace. I suppose almost anything is *possible*, it's really a question of how difficult it is to do. If people are actually using it legitimately, we can't really turn it off for everyone. Hopefully Brian will have a comment when he's had a chance to look at the situation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mg Posted November 5, 2003 Share Posted November 5, 2003 Yeah, as Mary says. Same thing here. My name on a picture I didn't take (two cases). As for the other site, I can't read anything so I can't navigate on it... Any clue ? <p> Thanks a lot, Keith, for informing us, and thanks Bob for the quick response. What I would like to know is whether photo.net intends to e-mail these 2 sites for now, to ask them to take it all down, or not. That's just to know whether we all need to take individual actions or not. Thanks again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bobatkins Posted November 5, 2003 Share Posted November 5, 2003 Well, it certainly could not hurt if individual photo.net members sent email to the administrative contacts of these websites (they are listed above), detailing exactly what their particular objection is and requesting that the links and images be removed. I'm not an official contact for photo.net so it's not my place to send complaints. Our official Administrative contact is Lisa Surati (lisasurati@photo.net) so it's probably up to Lisa (or Brian) to officially contact these sites on behalf of photo.net. I can't comment on what they intend to do, because I don't know! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mg Posted November 5, 2003 Share Posted November 5, 2003 Ok. Thanks, Bob. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
photomark Posted November 6, 2003 Share Posted November 6, 2003 Since photo.net prevents hotlinking of images for non-subscriber accounts, it is clearly <i>possible</i> on the server level. The standard way to prevent hotlinking across the board is to filter the referer headers. Whether the difficulty of doing this on a per-user basis is prohibitive is, of course, something only people familiar with the internals of photo.net know. I usually let the hotlinking on my site slide for blogs and personal photo lists like the ones mentioned. Sometimes, however, a popular blog can represent a quite a bit of bandwidth so I either shut them out or tell apache to send them an ad instead of the photo. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
basscheffers Posted November 6, 2003 Share Posted November 6, 2003 This is a problem with any picture put on the web and considering the stress photo.net server are already under, doing not only an "allowed at all" but also an "allowed for this referer" check is a good idea. It would also need an interface where people can enter/maintain their blocked/allowed domains. But since the "allowed at all" check is already in there, may as well create a simple interface to allow people to turn in on and off for themselves. Although I think that in many cases, offenders will switch to simply downloading the picture and uploading it to their own site. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mottershead Posted November 6, 2003 Share Posted November 6, 2003 It isn't so much a bandwidth issue as a copyright issue. Out of 6-7 million retrievals of photos from our servers per day, only about 90,000 of them are from external sites, such as these two, a little over 1%. This is a small load. Also, much of this load is legitimate, and intended by subscribers, whose images are theoretically the only ones that can be linked like this. These two sites are pretty obscure and don't generate noticable traffic at all. Most of the external sites that are linking to images on photo.net are blog sites, auction sites, and other photography forum sites where one assumes that the person who set up the link was the person who uploaded the photo to photo.net. In fact, being able to do this is a privelege only afforded to subscribers, although for technical reasons sometimes the subscriber-image checking is turned off. It has been turned off in recent weeks. I can imagine various schemes to let subscribers say which external sites should be able to link to their images, so that only their intended sites can do it. This would require some implementation. An easier system to implement would be a blanket block of particular external sites, but this would have to be done on a case by case basis. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
keith_laban Posted November 6, 2003 Author Share Posted November 6, 2003 Brian, thanks for your response. I think it better that photo.net implements a block on particular external sites rather than individual photographers having to take their own actions, which would probably be unsuccessful anyway. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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