JUB and hotlinking

[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.