Lessons to Image Hotlinkers: DON'T! ~ Serr8d's Cutting Edge

I did a g00gle search for images of Sarah Palin. You might recall that on March 15 I posted on Sarah Palin as being a candidate for John McCain's VP search (I was early on Sarah's bandwagon!). I wanted to post a photo of Sarah, so I found one: a great shot, but the sky was a dismal gray. I hated that.

Well, you know I have GIMP, a fantastic photo editor. GIMP has a plugin-filter called "Darla's Blue Sky and Clouds". I've put it to great use to 'fix' photos that have skies that are over saturated (see my latest Friday Photo for an example).

Well, on my latest g00gle search, I started seeing my 'fixed' photo coming up high on the results. But, none of those hits led back to my post here, or to TennesseeFree (my co-posting venue).

What happened is simple. People hotlinked my Photobucket account, to bring my image to their posts, without asking permission or giving me any credit.

I left this comment on the offending sites that allowed comments:

There's a story behind that photo.

I found it and 'corrected' it in my first post on Sarah Palin (March 15th, 2008). The original photo featured gray, listless skies, so I used the 'Darla's Blue Skies and Clouds' filter in my GIMP editor to add the nice blue skies you see there.

Now, I don't really mind you stealing my bandwidth to display that photo. I've posted it on three different blogs..my own, and two where I co-blog (Protein Wisdom's Pub, and TennesseeFree.) Since you seem like a nice conservative sort, I won't change the photo to embarrass you (if you were a liberal, a leftist, you better believe I would; and I have). Plus, I pay for unlimited bandwidth and storage, so no harm done.

Would've been nice, though, for you to give me proper credit.

Republican values, and all of that.

;D

Huh. Only one blogger replied. Janet Morrison, blogging at 'Janet Morrison's Community Dialog', replied somewhat snippily "You probably need to talk to google images about allowing others to post your pictures."

Janet. Google doesn't condone hotlinking. That's a horse of a different stripe. My reply to Janet...

Well, no, what I do when I see a photo somewhere that I want to place in a post is...1)Save the image to my desktop. 2)Either upload the photo to blogger and display it there, or save it to my photobucket account and link from there.

What you've done is called 'hotlinking' and is considered bandwidth theft. Every time that photo loads from my (paid for by me) photobucket account, it costs me against my bandwith quota.

That's considered in bad form, really.

Don't feel bad. You're not the only one.

Thing about it is, my original post is never linked in g00gle searches; but it shows up against my photobucket hit count.

Fair warning: I'm going to change that photo, to teach some lessons to inconsiderate people.

Lessons learned, an all of that.

So, I "Fixed" the original photos. And edited my posts to reflect the changes. Janet, unflinchingly, fixed her post already. Maybe she's learned something.

See the other offending posts, as of now unfixed, and that hilarity that's probably going to ensue:

Glenn Sacks (a monster of a site!)

Akindele Unleashed

...and whoever else hotlinked my Photobucket account that I don't know about.