JUB and hotlinking

[Xstr8guy]

It seems that the moderators are encouraging hotlinking. http://www.justusboys.com/forum/showthread.php?t=24041

Micheal, it seems that you are being linked http://www.justusboys.com/forum/showthread.php?t=32556

[Xstr8guy]

This thread has some T*i*t*a*n images near the bottom of the first page. 2 pictures of Joey Dino with t*i*t*a*n watermarks. You may want to educate your moderators a little better

[BDBionic]

For the most part, surfers on there do a pretty good job of either hosting images themselves that they then hotlink on to JUB, or sharing webspace with one another to display images on there.

I've noticed a couple jackasses who seem to think hotlinking is their right on that site ("If they didn't want their images hotlinked, they should disable hotlinking! Otherwise we can do whatever we want!!!" ... fuckers) but by in large the surfers on that board are pretty good about where and whom they hotlink from.

[JustBryce]

LOL, JD is the other site owner and I doubt that I will be educating him anytime soon.

I would have to disagree that his statement that you reference is "encouraging" hotlinking. He provides an example that references an internal file on our site. Then he shows how BBCode works.

Implying that he is doing something wrong is surprising to me. I think it is certainly a reach and a jump to a conclusion which is inaccurate.

There are entire services like fapomatic built up around the practice of hosting images so that they can be linked to from forums such as ours.

If anyone needs help learning how to prevent hotlinking, please let me know and I'll be happy to show you how to do it. Otherwise the next thing you know... google will have spidered all your content and made it available for free. Google image bot is the one you should really be checking up on.

[Xstr8guy]

You can include an image from your JUB Homepage Gallery or from anywhere on the Internet using this method. To find the URL of the image, Windows users can right click on it and select Properties. Simply copy/paste the url shown to your post as demonstrated above.

In my mind, you are educating posters to hotlink from sites that may wish to not be hotlinked from. :hmmph:

And yahoo and google image searches send me traffic. I don't mind having the images from my tours being hotlinked as long as I get some traffic back for the hassle.

[Rainbo1956]

I'd have to agree with you.

I always ask my self why does the news put shit on T.V. that educates people on how to make a bomb or how to rob a house...(i.e....they go into the details of how the bomb was made by the jerk or how the ass the riped someone off...but, they put in right on the air anyway! All the details.)

Any board or anyone that gives details on "How to do it" is actually "condoning" it unless they say, "But, DON'T" do it......and even then...they've already said HOW to do it, so WTF?


LOL...yeah, don't try this at home~

[DigitalJay]

I don't agree at all. That's like saying teaching someone how to send an email is encouraging spam. You can't take away recess just because a few kids fell off the merry-go-round, strict acceptable usage policies with zero tolerance are the answer, not limiting the abilities of your forum or it's users.

[DigitalJay]

LOL, JD is the other site owner and I doubt that I will be educating him anytime soon.

Implying that he is doing something wrong is surprising to me. I think it is certainly a reach and a jump to a conclusion which is inaccurate.

Actually, he was saying you should educate your Moderators, like Thundercizzle, who hotlinked to copyrighted images.

Uploading copyrighted images from Titan and such to services like fapmatic and hotlinking to them isn't any better than hotlinking straight to the site the content belonds to.

[Dzinerbear]

JustBryce,

Your admin person/moderators are essentially teaching the people on the Just Us Boys board how to steal – pure and simple. And you are breaking copyright and licensing laws.

I licenced pictures of Damien Vincetti from Ounique to be displayed on my site. I did not give Just Us Boys permission to display them on their board. In fact, no one even asked me if I minded these images appeared on your board. And furthermore, had you asked, I would not have been able to grant you permission because doing so would have violated the licencing agreement I created with Ounique when I purchased the pictures.

xstr8guy alerted me that this message contained hotlinked images to my site:
http://www.justusboys.com/forum/showthread.php?t=32556
He knows my site inside and out, so I trust him. Of course now the images have been removed and your moderators are getting a bit snotty: "if you don't want you content included prevent it. it is really not difficult to accomplish." says Corny.

And just because a webmaster doesn't take measures to prevent people from stealing his bandwidth doesn't make it alright to do so.

Pretty piss poor business practices if you ask me. You guys keep this up and Just Us Boys is going to become known as the club1069.topfong.com of the western hemisphere. And furthermore, if your board members continue this practice, and you allow it, you're going to find yourself on the receiving end of a Titan subpoena one day.

I'm furious.
Dzinerbear

[BDBionic]

Well, speaking as someone who has almost 800 posts on JUB's board and has been active there for over a year, I'd say the majority of posters on there understand how uncool hotlinking is and discourage it, though as I mentioned before there are some who seem to think it's their right to hotlink images and that attitude is full of shit, far as I'm concerned.

But at the same time I see a lot of the board's most active members go out of their way to ensure they're hotlinking from their own webspace. Copyright issues are something else entirely, as many of these surfers obviously don't have license for that content. But at the same time, the only way to cut that practice out is... what? Take down any and all gay surfer boards in the world? I don't think that does anyone any good. I think the guys that run JUB go out of their way to make sure it's a board that encourages participation and entertainment as well as respect legality as much as those 2 things can be compatible.

I mean it works two ways... xstr8guy, for example, has a huge banner sig promoting his own website that shows up with every post he makes. So one the one hand he knows the site gets lots of traffic and wants to tap in to some of that through his participation in the board. Yet at the same time condemns the site for having the kind of activity and traffic he wants access to in the first place?

I'd imagine that were anyone to notice their images being hotlinked and requested of John and Bryce to edit those posts and take em out, they'd be on top of it ASAP and get that done. As much as I'm not fond of hotlinking, I also don't wanna see a great board that can be a resource to both surfers and webmasters get shut out because of something like this. Attidude's like Corny's aside, there's a lotta gray area in here that can be worked within where everyone's happy.

my 2 cents.

[Dzinerbear]

I mean it works two ways... xstr8guy, for example, has a huge banner sig promoting his own website that shows up with every post he makes. So one the one hand he knows the site gets lots of traffic and wants to tap in to some of that through his participation in the board. Yet at the same time condemns the site for having the kind of activity and traffic he wants access to in the first place?

Tit for tat I guess. Encourage hotlinkers and watch webmasters go into action to steal back traffic.

BDBionic, I expect hotlinking crap from surfers, but I'm just really disappointed, I expect more from a peer. I guess I expect too much.

Dzinerbear

[BDBionic]

I simply don't feel absolute condemnation is the way to go here.
Topfong? They're a site run by invisible people on the other side of the world, notoriously disrespectful and harmful in how they go about hotlinking and fucking with sites and not good for a single penny to anyone that gets hotlinked on there.

JUB, on the other hand, is run by people we know, we've met, we interact with, who participate and engage with other webmasters on this board, who are responsive to emails and correspondence, who go to shows and conventions, who many of us have met on many occasions, and who have strong business and social relationships with many of the people on this board.

They also have a lot of high quality traffic.

So rather than assuming the worst and accusing them of anything on this board, why not email them and ask them about the hotlinking? Why not email them and ask about the opportunity to promote ones sites on their board and website? Why not see the benefits of potential exposure on a highly trafficked website run by people you know and are no more than a point and click away at any given time? Instead of just assuming this zero tolerance stance and firing off barbs at em, leaving room for no other interpretation than their being bad guys.

Why does a board like that automatically have to be the enemy? Can it not also be an extremely valuable resource? Don't get me wrong. I dislike hotlinking just as much as the next guy, and there's some messed up boards out there that thrive off of flaunting technical loopholes and sticking it to content producers. But I'm just not seeing any malicious intent on the part of JUB here. And don't see the zero tolerance approach as applying in this instance.

I'm a businessman. And I dislike hotlinking in that it interferes with my business. But when other aspects of a situation produce benefits that outweigh any potential damage coming from the hotlinking? The hotlinking just don't matter to me anymore. It's secondary. Cuz I'm a businessman.

[Dzinerbear]

Good evening, crow is now being served in the dzinerbear dining room.

I want to apologize to the Just Us Boys team. I've had a rough day, I've had a rough sales period. JUB got in the way and I blew.

With the last Google update came a drastic drop in my site's top-ten rankings. It's temporary, it'll correct itself as the latest algorithm gets tweaked. But in the meantime, my sales dropped like a bolder off a cliff in a Road Runner cartoon. So I've been hauling butt for the past week in the gallery production deparment to get sales back up. Understandably, when I fell victim to hotlinking, I freaked. Nothing like feeling like I was being kicked. When I freak, I tend to over-react. (In Phoenix, after a couple of cocktails, ask me to tell you about the Canadian Tire "look mother fucker" story, it's classic dzinerbear.)

I should have approached JUB's team privately with this. Again, in seeing how their moderators handled this on the board with a flippant remark, I didn't figure I'd get anywhere. I was wrong, I should have tried anyway.

My apologies to Bryce and the team at Just Us Boys, I shouldn't have placed you in my target.

Michael
aka
dzinerbear

[BDBionic]

You're a standup guy, Michael. It's cool hearing where you're coming from. Helps me, as well, know I'm not the only one figuring out what's up after the Google shuffle.

On some keywords I've had for ages, I'm nowhere to be found. On others I'd given up on long ago, I'm up at the top. So now it's a bite-my-nails session in anticipation of what they do next hehe.

The sites of yours that I'm familiar with should be back up there soon, though, as you've gone out of your way to make them truly relevant to the terms you're after and there's just no substitute for that.

I wanna hear the Canadian Tire story.