Uh, Tuba, About bandwidth stealing.

[Lord Jim]

I don't think that everyone here realizes the difference between referencing a page or site and using art or pictures from that site.

The main issue that I am talking about is the cute little smiley that shoots the other smiley. I've seen several references to that picture and one admitted that the site didn't belong to them and others have been using this forum.arstechnica.com/forum/ubb/smileyshot2.gif as a reference (hopefully, that won't show up as the smiley) including a moderator. I don't think that anyone realizes that they are stealing someone else's bandwidth when they do this.

I just saw a thread where the person referenced a smiley 72 times, luckily it was one that was on this board. Had that been on another person's web space, that would have created 72 downloads of that file for every time anyone brought up that thread. Some people pay by the amount of bandwidth that is used.

I know that almost everyone that has an internet account has web space that is part of the account. If they download the file and put it on their web space, then the bandwidth comes from them instead of someone else's space that I'm sure didn't give them permission to do this.

Tuba, my questions to you are:
Will the SDMB provide space for files such as these so people aren't stealing other people's bandwidth.
Can the SDMB police the references to off-site files so that they are edited out or permission is granted for their use?
Can an index be created of pictures that are stored on the SDMB server for anyone's use?

With all due respect, this forum is the main offender from what I have seen. People play around with things here and may never use them on other forums. But, each time a thread is opened here, with an off-site reference, it steals bandwidth from someone.

I don't have a real grudge or anything. It's just that I don't think that people understand what's happening. If I had the web site that had the smileyshot picture on it and I saw hundreds of downloads a day on that file but none that referenced my page itself; I'd change the picture to "Fuck you very much!" and see how everyone liked having that spread all over their screens.

Sorry about the rant, just wondered if there was anything that might be done without a big censorship job.

You DO have a point and it's well made.

It's not that people are intending to steal, it's that most of 'em don't know or don't understand.

You've explained it very nicely, and I hope more people read your explanation and go forth and sin no more.

Everybody, please, do not use images from other sites without permission. We've been really lax about it but we need to crack down, obviously.

Let's be more considerate of our friends in cyberspace.

your humble TubaDiva
Administrator
The Straight Dope




[Note: This message has been edited by TubaDiva]

Hmm. Y'know, this is one of those things that you techie types understand that those of us who are members of the computer illiterati do not. I believe you, because you are the expert and I am not, but my mind simply doesn't work that way, and I don't understand how posting the smileyshot thingie "steals" something from somebody else.

That said, I'll plead guilty to allowing Middle Son to post and play with the smiley-shooting-other-smilies images on the "test, test, test" thread in this forum, not realizing that there was something wrong with that. Jenny, why don't you go ahead and delete that post of his, if it is a problem, and if somebody can explain it to me in a way that I can explain it to an 11 year old kid I'll do that so the problem doesn't reoccur.

Thanks.

-Melin

[SterlingNorth]

Merlin, it's not the file itself that cost the money. It's the transport of that image to your computer. It's kinda like when you send something using the postal service. It costs you 32 ¢ first class. Every time someone references an image, you are forcing them to send you that item and pay the postage.

I hope I cleared it up and not confused people any more.

[Lord Jim]

Melin, that was the point I was trying to make. Most here don't understand what the difference is. I'm not trying to put down anyone, just see if there is a way that we can make one download to this site and everyone reference it here, instead of hundreds of downloads from someone else's site.

[SterlingNorth]

And also, much like when during Christmas it takes twice as long for something to get delivered because so many people are sending stuff, when a lot of people reference a site to grab a image (even if it is the same one). It takes more resources to send the image, and it slows down their server (and this site as it waits for the server).

------------------
Tell a man that there are 400 billion stars and he'll believe you. Tell him a bench has wet paint and he has to touch it.

[TubaDiva]

We obviously need to make some sort of board-wide statement about this.

Let me kick this problem upstairs to Ed, we'll draft something reasonable.

In the meantime, could you spread the word among your friends here? It would be helpful.

I'm also going to ask the moderators to take a harder look and a harder line on this issue.

your humble TubaDiva
Administrator
The Straight Dope

[Patty O'Furniture]

luckily it was one that was on this board

Tattletale.

I took this into account when orchestrating the rolleyes concerto. I would never reference a large file that would take more than a few seconds do download, but I also agree that many people might not know better & could do this innocently. I'm sure there must be a safety that the techs can build in if it ever does become a problem. (At my last job, I was very concerned about throughput since all the workstations were diskless & therefore constantly broadcasting for every little task. If more than a handful of people attempted to download something at the same time, the network came to a crawl. I put a 10 second timeout limit on all requests that went out past the local LAN and that pretty much took care of the problem. It worked so well in fact, that I would heartily recommend it for this or any site if throughput ever does become an issue.)

------------------
In·flam·ma·ble, a. Flammable.

[Lord Jim]

Opus, sorry about using your thread as an example. I thought it was funny that you misspelled it 72 times. Then, I went to a thread in MPSIMS (that I don't normally go) and saw a moderator use the picture. I had seen Cessandra already ask someone if it was their site that they got the picture from. I just thought it was about time to bring this up.

By the way, I loved the 72 misspellings, more than the smileys

[Patty O'Furniture]

So what's the original image you're referring to? I wanna see!!

------------------
In·flam·ma·ble, a. Flammable.

[Lord Jim]

The picture I'm referring to is one smiley face drawing out a gun and shouting the green smiley face.

I'm not going to refer to the picture because I would be doing the exact same thing I am questioning.

But it wasn't your smilies per se that I was talking about as much as it was that people come to this forum and reference a picture and that picture may be off-site. And they display it several time and each image draws bandwidth from someone else's site.

I really am sorry that I used your thread as an example. You did refer to a local image not an off-site image.

Please, forgive me.

[Abner Normal]

Let me see if I can explain exactly what stealing bandwidth is. Suppose you have an art gallery you want only YOUR visitors to see. Yet the bar next door keeps sending people in to look, taking the space away from YOUR friends to stand. So YOUR friends miss your show because of all the strangers.

I realize this is a gross simplification. But I had to dumb it down for the debaters.. :)

You know how they are, great on ideas, suck at the net.


<h1>Hey! I earned this one!</h1>

------------------
"Tell me and I'll forget; Show me and
I may remember; Involve me and I'll
understand." - Old Chinese Proverb

[SterlingNorth]

Waayyy off topic, but
I've been on (and off) this board for eleven months and just NOW I notice that (unlike a certain magician) Melin's screen name has no R.

I'm getting some glasses, mañana.

------------------
Tell a man that there are 400 billion stars and he'll believe you. Tell him a bench has wet paint and he has to touch it.

[SterlingNorth]

Tuba and opus, other than a new rule and some more policing, a KB per post limit may be difficult. If I remember the original idea for this was so that if you need to display a chart of come type, you can do it. Actual scientific charts I've seen on the net is way bigger than the dreaded Hello Kitty graphic.
Of course it would be a good idea (and easier) to just ask people to stop using the Hell Kitty and parody smilies. Or if the teeming thirty really really have to use the Kitty smilies (I don't know why!), ask them to get permission to mirror them on the site.

Originally posted by SterlingNorth:
Waayyy off topic, but
I've been on (and off) this board for eleven months and just NOW I notice that (unlike a certain magician) Melin's screen name has no R.

I'm getting some glasses, mañana.



::laughing:: Well, I *have* been called a "witchey woman" before . . . ;)

-Melin

[TubaDiva]

Actually, it's not such a big issue, we just need to enforce the rules already in place and educate our forum members a little better.

There's a big difference between using graphic elements on our site (like the regular smileys we have) and "borrowing" an element from another site.

As users of this board, we all need to be more considerate of other people and their property.

Those of us that are moderators need to do a better job about policing our forums and explaining board policies to our members.

your humble TubaDiva
Admnistrator
The Straight Dope

[Lord Jim]

Tuba, I think you are right that it isn't a big issue. If people start playing dueling smileys, trying to see who can find the neatest one somewhere, then it could begin to be a problem.

I probably wouldn't have said anything last night except that I saw how people thought it was fun to play around with the smileys and then saw that even a moderator didn't realize the difference between a local one and an off-site one.

I'm glad to see several people that know the difference and have brought some old threads to the surface that also explain it.

Jim

[manhattan]

Hi. My name is manhattan, and I am a bandwidth thief.

In these days of Gigabyte bandwidth and whatnot, I honestly thought there was no longer an issue with referencing a site for a few KB, reasoning that the site reference was worth more to the site than the small usage of bandwidth (I went to the site the "shooting smilie" came from, for instance. I may even join in on their MB).

Clearly I was wrong. I apologize, and I pledge not to do it again.

Consider me educated. I thank you all for pointing it out to me.

------------------
Livin' on Tums, vitamin E and Rogaine

[NanoByte]

Well, I think authorities here should stand on firm reality here. . .including number -- Kb/s and $. I'm certainly no expert on the various considerations discussed here, but I think some people here are getting too carried away. I think manhattan is not too far from right.

Apparently there are two considerations being discussed here -- 1) the cost to someone and the congestion to others, as a result of the bandwidth usage in using UBB code for tranfer of images to the server for this MB, each time someone accesses a post here with such code, and 2) any copyright infringement in so doing.

As to the smiley-murder animated GIF: '1)' What bandwidth is required for that? I'll bet it's real peanuts, and: '2)' I think it's funny that JimB now says he won't point out that GIF. . .because he already did in his OP, from which I looked at it for the first time. I also looked all around that that forum site but could not find any reference to copyrights of anything thereon. I won't say that doesn't mean there aren't any on anything there, and if there were, perhaps the law would claim access of an image there could be a violation of copyright, since there could be things there that are copyrighted by a third party who has given permision of the site to use them but has not put them in the public domain. If everything there is not copyrighted by anyone other than the site people, if they don't notice copyright on anything there, I don't think they have any such claim against anyone downloading such material.

So if, say, I downloaded, to Web storage at my ISP, something from another site which thing is legally in the public domain (and maybe expressly so stated on that site), I would not be violating any copyright in so doing, and would not in letting it be accessed, from my storage, by any other Net terminal, through any other servers.

If the gizmo is only a few Kb in size, I think nobody is charged or inconvenienced by such a bit tranfer. If SDMB gets the thing from my storage, and the product of its size and the number of MB-post hits runs over whatever my ISP has limited my Web-storage access-capacity to, I'm sure I'll either get a complaint or additional charge from my ISP. To date I have not gotten either, but I haven't linked many large files from the SDMB to my ISP Web storage, though it has more than most posters, by far, I'm sure.

I certainly think it's reasonable for the SDMB staff or moderators to remove UBB code from posts AFTER A CERTAIN TIME if the image or sound file it links to is of a significant size, but I don't think doing such, in the case of the above example, is worth the trouble.

Maybe I missed some points here, but I hate the results of wild scares. Remember Y2K? :p I hope some people very technical in this area, together with some people good with financial sense, take a close look at this, before other people at the SD go ga-ga over it.

Ray (I was gonna put a great big GIF here but. . .then I remembered Slug had given Tuba a set of his whips and high heels.)

[ZenBeam]

I realize this may be a nit, but... If an offsite gif is referenced 72 times, will it really be downloaded 72 times? I thought the browsers were smarter than that, and would grab it once and copy it. Even if it's then used elsewhere in that thread, on the board, or even on a different board, isn't in my cache, for a while at least? Of course, everyone who opens that thread has to get it once, and that could add up.

------------------
It is too clear, and so it is hard to see.

[ZenBeam]

Maybe I should have read "The rolleyes concerto" first. Man that thread is slow! :)

------------------
It is too clear, and so it is hard to see.

[Cessandra]

Sorry I'm late.

One thing, the smilies that I have been using come from a page on Tripod. The girl who created the site gave permission for people to use the smileys on message boards. In fact, that was the very purpose of her site. Doesn't that make it ok?

------------------
Cessandra (http://www.angelfire.com/tx3/miscjunk/profile.html)

I would've gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for those meddling kids!

[TubaDiva]

IMHO, if it's public domain and not overly large, no harm, no foul.

That's pretty much how we've conducted ourselves here and it's not a bad policy.

your humble TubaDiva
Administrator
The Straight Dope

[RTFirefly]

I would hope so, Cess; from time to time, I've been using the old version of the colon-D smiley, which Gaudere put on her website so we could keep on using it if we didn't like the new one.

[TubaDiva]

Back to the top!

your humble TubaDiva
Administrator
The Straight Dope

[PatronAnejo]

ZenBeam is right, bandwith is a non-issue. The .gif file in question is only 7.55 KB in size, and once stored in client-side cache, is not requested again from the server no matter how many times it is referenced on a page.

Anyone who is unconvinced, however, is welcome to use my bandwidth. Be aware that I had no part in the creation of this .gif, and permission to mirror it has been neither sought nor granted:
http://publish.hometown.aol.com/patron1/myhomepage/smileyshot2.gif

[Suzeanne]

Let's be a little more specific here, shall we?

Bandwidth is NOT a "non-issue" -- it might be for THAT one file, on THIS site alone, to ONE particular site owner, but if people across the Net are referencing that one file on all of the boards they frequent, that tiny KB file suddenly turns into several MB worth of drain on the host's server. Not only is that file drawn for everyone that uses it, but then it's drawn again for every person that reads that board, multiplying the bandwidth usage further. Then multiply it AGAIN for all of the folks that do a lot of surfing and regularly empty their caches.

"Oh, no, it's no big deal, it's only 4 K."

Uh huh.

"But officer, I only took 20 bucks out of the register. That doesn't make it stealing, right?"

BZZZZ, thank you for playing.

I know it sounds damn harsh, but put it into perspective: What if it WASN'T a 4 K file? What if it was a 50, or 100, or 300 K file? (Oh, I shudder at the thought of THAT image) What if your webserver charged you for every K over a certain MB of bandwidth per month? What if that bandwidth was now several gig over your bandwidth limit?

It's suddenly costing that person a whole lot of money. Their host could cancel their account (happens quite a bit, especially on higher traffic sites when people either don't realize what directly linking to images can do, or just plain don't care because "it's only a little file."

And if you're costing me money that I wouldn't otherwise be spending, that sounds like stealing to me.

Don't get me wrong. If a site says "Sure, go ahead! Link to my images directly! I'm independantly wealthy!," then big deal, right? Not really. So they have one of those unlimited bandwidth deals. Guess what? Servers will still cancel you if your bandwidth is totally outrageous. They have the right to do that.

You know what else? If the person that hosts that file off their server does NOT want you to "borrow" their images, they can take it a whole lot further. A few nice letters can get YOUR site shut down for stealing bandwidth, and your ISP cancelled. ISPs really don't like having their clients reported for fraud, theft, or harassment. Trust me on this one, because I've sent more than a few of those letters out myself.

Yes, I take this issue personally. I have multiple websites, and camgirls have a really tough time of it because our sites are very graphics intensive. If someone sets up their own site to "show us off" -- ha -- and then it's visited several hundred times a day, drawing on multiple 12-30 K images, we'd go broke fast.

I guess my point in all of this is that, cough, size doesn't matter. Without permission, it's still wrong. Overdoing it is still wrong, and you have to realize that it's not just one instance in a lot of cases (like the smileys). Do you really think that the people registered to this board are the only ones on the Net that think that particular file is really cool?

It adds up, and it is most definitely important to a whole lot of people that run commercial, or even small and controlled personal sites. Argue all you want about it over one small single issue, but it's that great big picture that causes the real problem.

Surf smart, and don't add to the problem. Don't think that it's okay just because it's a small file, or someone else does it.

Please?

------------------
I just haven't been the same since that house fell on my sister.

[Patty O'Furniture]

Gee, I thought the forum was About this message board.

We've all been very clear that we're talking about a single instance and how it affected THIS message board, if at all (it didn't).

Suzeanna, your points may be vaild, but would be better placed in a GQ in a thread dealing with bandwidth issues in general.


------------------
When will all the rhetorical questions end?

[Suzeanne]

A: It's Suzeanne.
B: When someone makes a blanket statement that's it all right to do it, then it DOES affect this message board.

Get over it.

We're supposed to be FIGHTING ignorance here, not bloody well contributing to it, and allowing people to assume that it's no big deal to steal bandwidth is contrary to what this site is all about.

See, insular as you might want THIS board to be, it's still part of a greater whole, and by allowing OUR board, where we should be all nice law abiding netizens (yeah, right), to contribute to a huge problem, is a Bad Idea.

Of course, since your post had NOTHING to do with the topic whatsover except to complain about my, GASP, daring to post on the issue, maybe you should just meander off to MPSIMS or the Pit where you might be better received.

Crap like this just reminds me why I hardly ever post. Ignorance is winning, and it makes me sick.

Gee, I am SO sorry, I'll take my totally irrelevant facts somewhere else.

------------------
I just haven't been the same since that house fell on my sister.

[Lord Jim]

Hang in there Suzeanne, there are some of us here that understand. Some people just seem to want to make numbers out of things. How much does it cost, what is the impact, how much bandwidth is it using, and on and on.

They just won't stop to think that using something of someone else's without their knowledge and permission is wrong. That may be up for debate, but not by me. I understand it completely.

They are trying to debate that stealing a pack of gum is ok, but stealing a car isn't. Well, that's why we all pay more for things because of shoplifters.

I personally have the faith that if people know the right way, the better way, the acceptable way, then they'll choose it. That's why I brought this up and that's why others have re-enforced it.

Hopefully, there is enough information here that the people who want to know the better way to do things can understand how to. If not, I hope they keep asking questions to help get an understanding.

To those that think it's ok to steal a pack of gum, then this probably doesn't mean much anyway.

[NanoByte]

Hey, these posts are getting bytewise larger than smilies.

If you take something from a shop, they can't sell it. If you duplicate reflect or an image, nothing has left the shop, and they can sell the image whenever they want to.

And the issues of bandwidth and copyright seemed be completely intermingled and befuddled in the mess that is this thread. It's wasted bandwidth.

Ray

[PatronAnejo]

Suzeanne:

Okay, let's be specific.

What we are talking about is a small .gif file, unleashed upon the public domain, intended for use on a bulletin board. The bulletin board in question--owned by ArsTechnica--is a PC enthusiasts' forum, and they anticipate all manner of code-tweaking from their members (of which I am one). As they say, they are "not English majors who've decided to pretend [they] know something". If a rottweiler doesn't like what you're doing to it, he'll bite you on the ass. It's presumptuous of you and JimB to police others on their behalf.

What we are not talking about is stealing gum, hijacking a car, or a bunch of teenagers hacking past Adult Check to get a glimpse of some 38-H breasts. You can continue generalizing to encompass larger and larger perspectives of behaviors until you've drawn a parallel between gang rape and the fair use of a .gif that was intended for distribution over the internet; such an argument, while tenable, is by no means sound.

To be sure, it is a pain in the ass--if not impossible--to police the distribution of a wallpaper one has slaved over or images of one giving Tommy Lee a blowjob. Such is the price of exhibitionism, and I'm afraid your refusal to recognize that is as demonstrative of ignorance as anything else that has been posted herein.

[manhattan]

JimB said Hang in there Suzeanne, there are some of us here that understand. I'd like to add that some of us don't understand (or didn't) but are learning.

When I posted the shooting smilie I thought as Nano and Patron apparently do: that anyone who created such a thing expected and hoped that the image would be spread, on the theory that people would see where it came from and be drawn to the source. And I consider myself one of the principal defenders of intellectual property rights on this board. I was just jaded because the companies I deal with on a day to day basis buy OC3s and would happily trade some bandwidth for a possibility of a customer.

What I've learned is that while my theory may be true in some instances, it is incumbent on the potential user of an image to get an assurance of that truth with a statement from the owner of the image. What I ought to have done, if I really wanted to use the image that badly, is drop an email to the webmasters at ars technica asking them for permission.

So hang in there Suzanne. Some of us you have to beat with a two-by-four to get us to understand bandwidth economics, but we'll eventually get there.


------------------
Livin' on Tums, vitamin E and Rogaine

[TubaDiva]

Y'all can debate this issue all day if you want to, have at it, have fun.

When it gets to usage on this board, that's when it becomes an issue for us.

Patron, it's nice that you would offer to cache the image in question for our Teeming Millions, but as you admit, you didn't get permission to use it, so that still makes it not right for us to allow it on the site.

Nanobyte, you can argue the rightness of it as much as you wish, but if we followed your reasoning there would be no copyright or intellectual property laws at all. Cyberspace doesn't always reflect real life and this is the new frontier in a lot of ways, but we are not exempt from respecting other people's rights to their property.

There is also a moral imperative here and we choose to do the right thing. You may choose otherwise, but you can't choose that here.

your humble TubaDiva
Administrator
The Straight Dope

[Suzeanne]

Let's see: 7.4 K worth of a .gif file, times the number of registered users on this board ... 7.4 x 4624 = 34176 K

Gee, that's not much at all. No one would ever notice that drain -- unless, of course, it's repeated across the web since, as you so conveniently pointed out, the .gif was for use on message boards.

That adds up to several GB of transfer VERY fast.

What we ARE talking about is stealing bandwidth in regards to people on THIS site linking to images on other servers. It's not a "non-issue," it has nothing to do with porn, you deve, and it has a freakin WORLD TO DO WITH FUTURE POLICY ON THIS BOARD!

Why don't you put your magazine down, stop browsing for porn, type with both hands, and go back and read TubaDiva's replies to this thread -- or, dare you also insist that SHE is digressing when she mentions setting a board-wide statement about "borrowing" bandwidth from other sites?

ONE instance was pointed out, that of the itty bitty smiley that some of you seem to obsess over. The problem -- and yes, it's a problem -- is that it ISN'T just a matter of one file. That's just the one that got noticed and used as an example.

What we ARE talking about is theft. Stealing bandwidth is still wrong, whether it's a 7K image or a 300K image, and it can cost a site owner an outrageous amount of money. In addition, site administrators can be held responsible for what their users post (don't make me look up the cites again -- Melin? Your turn). The Chicago Reader might be pretty pissed if they had a bill for bandwidth usage sent to them for a site they didn't even own.

If, via this whole careless attitude of "oh, it's just a small file," other users decide that it's OKAY to steal (It's not) and keep on posting images from other sites, it has the possibilty of coming down to a nasty mess.

A: It's Wrong to steal bandwidth.
B: It's still Wrong, whether 1, or 20 or 2000 people think it isn't.
C: Insisting that a little image isn't Wrong leads to quibbles on "where does it start being stealing and what can we get away with." Sorry. It's still Wrong.
D: We're still talking about stealing.
E: It's relevant to any -- and I mean ANY -- message board that allows the posting of pictures.
F: It will continue to be an issue, and relevant, so long as people continue to post.
G: Size doesn't matter, whether it's one itty bitty .gif or a hundred.

We are NOT policing. We ARE providing facts and truth to the reality of bandwidth theft, and allowing what should be intelligent and conscientious SDMB users to make the right and legal choice on their surfing. We can't stop people, but we can make sure they know they're stealing. The karma, should they choose to ignore, is their own problem.

------------------
I just haven't been the same since that house fell on my sister.

Suzanne -- hate to tell you, but I'm planning on stealing something from you . . . .

That sig line! I LOVE it!!!! I am stashing it away for an appropriate moment. I'll try to remember to give you credit for it, though! ;)

-Melin

------------------
Siamese attack puppet -- California

Still neglecting and overprotecting my children

[Patty O'Furniture]

using something of someone else's
without their knowledge and permission is wrong

This much I understand, but please explain to me how I have any right to complain that people are accessing a site that I make publicly available for & encourage all the world to see.

Suppose I am a site owner/operator,

1. I write the code with special key words in the lookup line to make my site easy to find by search engines & web crawlers.

2. I have revenue-generating banners on my site, and I hope that many people will visit my site & click on them.

3. When I agree to the host's terms of service, I am acknowledging the possibility that I may be limited to X amount of traffic per month, and I further agree that any excess traffic is my responsibility and may be charged to me alone. Therefore, I have already agreed to pay for your access to my site, should it exceed my usage limitation.

So I understand & agree to these things, and then I am supposed to be irked that a lot of people are accessing my site & costing me money in over-usage fees?

(Exception: If I state on my site that you must obtain my permission to link to it, then it becomes an issue, but I don't think this is what we are debating.)

My major point was echoed by Tuba:

it's not such a big issue

and:

When it gets to usage on this board, that's when it becomes an issue for us.(emphasis mine)

With regard to:

Gee, that's not much at all... ...unless, of course, it's repeated across the web... ...That adds up to several GB of transfer VERY fast.

This might be a valid point if everybody accessed the link at the same exact time. ("Okay everybody, now on the count of three let's all click on this link...") This argument reminds us of the question of what happens when all 1 billion+ Chinese jump off a chair at the same time, or what happens if everybody in Springfield flushes their toilets at the same time. Sure- possibly catastrophic, but since it's never going to happen, it is just as much of a non-issue.

What is more, it has already been pointed out that:

once stored in client-side cache, [an image] is not requested again from the server no matter how many times it is referenced on a page.

So anybody who (or any message board that) has already cached the image in question is factored out of the bandwidth equation (for that particular image) from here on out. WAN hardware & software has become very clever in the last few years, and we have become very good at dealing with bottleneck issues.
Maybe I am too close to the problem, because I sit at a terminal all day long in a key metropolitan network operating center and try to configure network traffic patterns so that local web servers can get more hits, not fewer. Clients seem to want people to steal their bandwidth, because I get paid to figure out ways to get more people to visit their sites.

What we ARE talking about is theft

You'll have to elaborate on this for me. If you're talking about taking somebody's privately owned images/files/what have you, then I agree with you, but nobody is going to frisk me and find stolen bandwidth in my pockets no matter where I've been on the net.

To draw an analogy: water (the data that can be "stolen") flows through the pipes under the city's streets, and may or may not belong to you. Bandwidth is the pipes themselves, and they can't be "stolen" just because too many people opened their faucets. I can turn all my faucets on full blast, and possibly deprive my neighbor of water that she is trying to get, but I am stealing nothing by doing this (I'm just being a jerk of a neighbor) and at present there is no law preventing me from doing this, just as there is no law (that I know of) governing the use of a data medium (bandwidth).

My minor point was that this is going way beyond the scope of this particular forum, and has now gotten totally out of hand. When I said:

Suzeanna, (sic) your points may be valid, but would be better placed in a GQ in a thread dealing with bandwidth issues in general.

I was simply suggesting that we do this where more people are likely to get in on the debate; left in ATMB, we are essentially debating in a closet.

Quick, somebody switch on the ambulance siren so we can get some lawyers in here.


------------------
Don't make me get Glenda on your ass.

[Suzeanne]

Opus, I think the problem is that you aren't understanding how it works.

Many servers charge a certain amount of money for bandwidth. It's not a sudden drain, it's a monthly accumulation, and metered.

Think, instead of water, electricity. Stay with me here.

Now, your next door neighbor hooks up his house to YOUR circuits. He slips and and plugs in spotlights into the outlets in your garage. He splices wires and runs the power for his hottub. He runs wires across to your porch light, uses an adaptor, and plugs in his stereo to the socket.

Then he sits back and uses your electricity, free of charge to him.

However ... can you see where this is going? PLEASE tell me you can see this.

It's costing YOU a fortune for electricity that YOU aren't using. YOU are having to pay out tons of money that you could not reasonably anticipate having to spend, because someone else is using your system.

That's what stealing bandwidth is all about.

It's not a matter of everybody hitting at once. That's server load, not bandwidth. It can crash your server, but the bandwidth load is the same, whether they all hit at once, or over the course of a month.

As to the first part of your argument, how is directly linking to an image on someone's server, and, most importantly, without linking to that site and giving them traffic, a bonus to a site? Why the hell should anyone GO to that site in the first place when someone else is offering their images and they don't have to click a button?

Traffic and hits on a site, as opposed to bandwidth, doesn't just mean the drain on resources. It involves someone actually going to the site in question, instead of viewing a part of the site remotely. Stealing bandwidth also steals users, especially when no link is provided to the site in question. A site can't sell anything, or make money on click-throughs, or get memberships if no one goes there, no matter how many people use their images. Again, they're being cheated.

As to the whole cache thing ...

Do you ever reboot? Did you check the "check for changes every time I visit this page" selection in your browser?

Every time I reboot and then revisit a site, despite the fact that I do have a healthy cache, I have to sit and wait for images to load. They don't just automatically pop up because they're stored in the cache. That's part of why it's a temporary cache. If my computer stored the full data on every single site I visited, I'd need several thousand gigs just to be able to surf.

To review:

- Bandwidth has nothing to do with everyone accessing at once. The numbers tick away like your standard meter. They add up, and don't clear till the next cycle begins.

- People are not accessing your site when they directly link images -- they are accessing your SERVER. Your site is never visited, you don't make a dime on clickthroughs, and the visitor goes on without ever learning you exist.

- The debate is highly important to this site. It's entirely possible that people could lose their privilege to post ANY pictures at all if this becomes a more serious issue. The fact that so many do NOT understand the issue makes it even more relevant. It's why I'm still trying to explain it. I'd rather not lose all the goodies on this site because someone had to push the envelope too many times.

I'm not exaggerating, either. Playing with HTML on this site is just as bad (though irrelevant to this conversation). Every time that TubaDiva has to shut down the board to fix the mess that some goober made just because he HAD to play with code, we come one step closer to losing the ability to use HTML at all.

The same goes for images. If people insist on linking in that manner, without understanding what's wrong with it, the Reader could face liability for the usage. Since they *really* don't want that to happen, don't you think it would be much easier on them just to shut the ability to post images down entirely?

If that didn't clear things up, I really don't know what will at this point. People are going to think what they want to.

------------------
I just haven't been the same since that house fell on my sister.

[OpalCat]

Let me try a different angle, complete with real-world examples.

Let's break up websites in a few ways.

1) Free vs Paid

Free servers, such as Geocities and Tripod and Xoom.... the person who made the site isn't paying, but the server is. Have you noticed that now if you link to an image on Xoom you get a XOOM logo instead? Tripod and Geocities and many others are instituting similar policies. Wanna know why? Because it is a BIG PROBLEM.

Analogy: My big gulp cup isn't very big, and chucking it out my car window isn't going to matter. True statement. Now go drive through some of the crappier neighborhoods in NYC.

Ok...moving on:
Paid sites. These are sites where the site owner is paying for their hosting.

There are several ways these are run, two common ways are to price by hits or by transfers. Yes, some people are charged BY THE NUMBER OF FILE TRANSFERS THEY SERVE. Your 3k gif is added the same as any other.
For the other, the smaller gif isn't going to matter as much as a larger file, but it's calling a hit to their server for every person who looks at every page where it is located.

Ok, so now let's get into some real examples.

I used to buy server space on someone else's machine (I have my own now). I paid $85/month for this, and it was supposedly "unlimited hits, unlimited transfers" woohoo!
4 months later they told me I was using too much bandwidth, and I had to start paying over $350/month for the level of bandwidth I was using. We're not talking about amazon.com numbers here, people. We're talking about OPAL'S FREAKING HOMEPAGE AND A FEW FRIENDS' SITES. $350.00 US. My other option was to move my stuff to another server. Guess what I had to do?

Ok, I had warning. Let me tell you how it has sometimes gone. In the real world. To people I KNOW PERSONALLY.

A site uses more bandwidth than it was supposed to, and at the end of the month, a BILL for SEVERAL HUNDREDS OF DOLLARS (in one case that I know personally, it was over a THOUSAND) shows up. DUE. Not "in the future" but YOU ALREADY OWE THIS MONEY.

Do you see how you do not have the right to do this? Do you see the access logs of the site you are borrowing an image from? Doubtful. You may think "but it's just one image" but how do you know that? How do you know how many other people are borrowing files from that site? And what kind of traffic the sites they are posted on get? Let me put a little perspective: If that "gunshot smiley" was posted on the front page of cnn.com the server it lives on would probably crash. Just from the calls for that one 3k file. Posted one time in one place.

Post the gunshot smiley in 25 threads, 4 times per thread, that is 100 calls for that file just from ONE PERSON viewing those 25 threads. Multiply that by the number of people likely to view the threads. Ok, so that is just the damage that YOU, ONE PERSON have done to that person. You don't know if they are paying for it. You don't know if other people are doing it too. YOU DO NOT KNOW.

Besides that, it is widely considered to be theft, to be rude, to be bad netiquette, etc. This isn't just on a whim.

------------------
--
"it's all real"
"I KNEW IT!!!"
O p a l C a t
www.opalcat.com (http://www.opalcat.com)

[Patty O'Furniture]

Hey, now we're getting somewhere.

A site can't sell anything, or make money on click-throughs, or get memberships if no one goes there, no matter how many people use their images. Again, they're being cheated

You're talking about copying images from a site and using them for my own twisted purposes- I already said early in this thread that I agree about this potential problem.

I understand your electricity analogy as I taught it for twelve years, but I don't think it's valid in this case (and perhaps the pipes analogy wasn't either). That analogy supposes a constant drain on my resources, what we were talking about here is a single instance request froma 3rd party server, and how that affects its BW.

I still take issue with the claim that any third party host is placed under any kind of load after the first instance of an image file transfer (and yes load increases with traffic, causing available bandwidth to decrease, so I still maintain that there is a direct relationship there). I asked about this somewhere else but I don't think I ever got an answer, as it depends on the specific management of this particular message board.
My personal experiments have concluded that after the first request is made for an image that exists on a 3rd party server, no further requests are made as long as the Reader's server keeps a copy of the file. Does it? Yes- an image that I posted several weeks ago can still be seen in the thread in spite of the fact that the original server from where the image was first referenced is no longer online. That's the cache I was speaking of- the Reader's, not end-user cache. (Not technically correct I know- it's on a drive, not in cache. I chose the term cache because the mechanism is transparent to most people and it "feels" like our local cache.)

Because of this, the third party server gets no more file requests from any member of this message board. All 4663 members of this message board can go look at that image and the demand is on the Chicago Reader's BW, not the original 3rd party server.

Any delay you're experiencing while waiting for images to appear is a matter of available BW between you and your ISP, not between the Reader and the original 3rd party server from which it came many moons ago.

This is the part of your post I disagree with, and it seems to be the meat of your argument:

People are not accessing your site when they directly link images -- they are accessing your SERVER

Yes, but only ONCE for everybody on this message board. Like I said, all 4663 members of this message board can go look at that JPEG even though the server on which it originally resided is long gone.

If that "gunshot smiley" was posted on the front page of cnn.com the server it lives on would probably crash

Wrong again for the exact same reason. A copy of the gunshot smiley would then reside on the CNN server (assuming all permissions had been properly granted) and no further burden would be placed on the original server.


In the intrests of coherency I am going to bed now.

------------------
Don't make me get Glenda on your ass.

[Omniscient]

I glazed over this silliness half way through, but I just want to mention that this topic was beaten into the ground in the past IIRC maybe early last fall. While I see that new posters should be made aware of this, and I believe that most who know enough of how to do it, know the right way to do it. The right way being to d/l it to your site or one of the generous posters around here's site, and link to that. I think most are smart enough to do that.

[Jois]

Look at the number of new users since last fall - how are they supposed to know this? I didn't, this is the kind of thing that belongs in FAQ, isn't it?



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Are you driving with your eyes open or are you using the force? - A. Foley

[OpalCat]

opus: You're wrong and I'll tell you exactly how I know:

WHen I made the "having sex" smiley graphic, I put it on my server and then posted it in several messages. I then decided that it wasn't quite right, went back, made changes to the graphic, and uploaded it again to my server. AND THE NEW VERSION SHOWED IN THE OLD THREADS.

------------------
--
"it's all real"
"I KNEW IT!!!"
O p a l C a t
www.opalcat.com (http://www.opalcat.com)

[Irishman]

Okay, I'm fully convinced that it is wrong. But I have no clue what it is that is wrong, and what is right.

Maybe it's because I've not tried linking any graphics, and the only smiley's I've used are the standard smiley, wink smiley, and cheesy grin smiley.

So what exactly is the right way? Can you spell it out (in a FAQ maybe) on the proper way to download and post images instead of "stealing bandwidth".

I'm not a moron, but I only pick up a little at a time as I use it, and so far have not had any real need to hunt and repost images.

Also, I might have somewhere else to pass on the info.

Thanks for any clarification.

Irishman - lost as usual (but happy the board is back)

[TubaDiva]

Originally posted by Irishman:
Okay, I'm fully convinced that it is wrong. But I have no clue what it is that is wrong, and what is right.

{snip}

So what exactly is the right way? Can you spell it out (in a FAQ maybe) on the proper way to download and post images instead of "stealing bandwidth".

Thanks for any clarification.

See if this doesn't help you see it straight:

Consider everything that you see on any webpage that you didn't personally create from stuff out of your own head, graphics or text or whatever, as the exclusive property of someone else.

And unless they have specifically given permission to you personally or to everybody in toto to copy or borrow or reproduce it, respect their right to hold copyright, their right to own their own stuff and don't use it.

You may LINK to the object in question, hyperlinks are fine, but you cannot reproduce something in total without consent of the copyright holder.

You are allowed to BRIEFLY cite quotes from a site to back up a point or illustrate your argument.

And, oh, while we're on the subject, we don't allow commercial solicitation, so no hyperlinks to "click on this to have money and sex," either.

Does this clear up the situation?

your humble TubaDiva
Administrator
The Straight Dope

[Irishman]

No. I fully agree that if you want someone to see something at a site, you should post a link to the site. Understand all about brief cites for the sake of commentary, giving someone a clue as to what to expect, etc.

My question is about the graphics stuff. This thread is talking about stealing "bandwidth" - I'm not sure what that is or how it's being stolen.

If copyright issues are the question, then as I see it you don't copy the image file, download it to your own site, and use it for your own purposes. But that's not the complaint above. The OP is about linking to the image stored on someone elses site, without linking to the page itself, so the image shows up on whatever page you want but is stored on their server, not your own.

I guess it has something to do with the way graphics and other web page bits are stored. You have space on a server to save the files. Then in the coding for the web page you reference the file you have in a separate location (directory, corner of the server). So the complaint is that they don't want you to link to a file at someone else's site and put it in your documents.

Am I close?

Basically I see 2 things.

As far as bandwidth, don't link to the file at someone else's site. It's okay to have a hyperlink to their webpage so you direct any traffic to actually increase the hits on their site, but don't just reference their file in your web page coding and leave the image/graphic stored on their server. That is stealing bandwidth.

If you would like to use a graphic, make sure it is okay for you to use by checking copyright issues. Is there a standard statement about content? Is it free domain? Is it posted to a board for the explicit purpose of being available for everyone to copy and use themselves? If it is okay, then copy it to your own server space. Then you can reference it in any web pages, bb posts, etc, you want, without stealing bandwidth from anyone else.

That's the type of explanation I think most of us want - a clear, concise statement of what to do and how. And then the moderators doing what they can to encourage the proper behavior.

[Lord Jim]

Irishman, you definately have the problem figured out. Copyright infringement and bandwidth theft can get intertwined, but they are seperate issues. Copyright has to do with what or whose it is, bandwidth has to do with where it is. They both have to do with permission to use. But when a graphics site says that images are free to use, they don't normally mean that you can feely hotlink the image from their site. They mean download it to your site and use it from your own space.

Here are a few links to visit for other's take on it if anyone is interested.

A basic description of bandwidth theft (http://www.darkmountain.com/netiquette/bandit.shtml)

A what it is and what to do about it site (http://wdvl.com/Authoring/Graphics/Theft/stlngrfx.html)

A developer's article on ZDNet about "direct linking" (http://www.zdnet.com/devhead/stories/articles/0,4413,2179976,00.html)

WebGuard's description (http://www.JamesSHuggins.com/html/wbg1/intro.htm)

A basic description of bandwidth (http://www.darklock.com/webguard/bandwidth.html)

From the image providers point of view (http://free-graphics.com/bandit.htm)


The basic idea is that the source of an image should be either this message board, your own web space, or a site that specifically gives you permission to reference images on their site (not permission to use).

And one last thing, Opus, the images are never loaded on the SDMB server. The image tag tells your browser where to look for the image, it doesn't tell the SDMB server where to look. Your browser request the file from the site specified in the image tag. Therefore, if a thousand members open the thread with the image in it, there are a thousand calls to the server that the image is located on.

I just hope that people respect others property, effort, server space, and bandwidth. This is pretty much an honor system.

[TubaDiva]

Well said, and thank you very very much.

At root, it's all about being a good Netizen and a moral person. That might sound trite and even foolish to some of you, but too bad.

your humble TubaDiva
You never go wrong doing the right thing.

[Jebediah]

Oh, wow. This is all my fault :D

Yes, I was the one who posted smileshot2.gif the first time on this bulletin board. I am a regular reader of ArsTechnica and a semi-regular reader here.

A bit of smileyshot history: ArsTechnica is a computer news website and UBB forum dedicated to computer hardware. This is where people congrigate to discuss what the best CD Writer is, and how to put together an overclocked dual celeron processor machine. They had their UBB forum upgrade, with its introduction of the new and controversial green smiley, about a week or two before this site did. One of the regular readers created smileyshot2.gif to express his innermost feelings about it. The owner of the board liked it so much that he added it to the server so that the user's bandwidth wouldn't be consumed when the smiley was posted. (That is to say, as long as any new links to the image were linked to the the copy on the server rather than the copy in the user's personal web site)

When this site had their upgrade, and the smiley revolution had begun, I felt that this site needed smileyshot2.gif, and knowing that ArsTechnica was a fully capable server with plenty of bandwidth and that linking over one little smiley would be a drop in the bucket, I guiltlessly linked it to here. And a good time was had by all.

To those of you feeling guilty over having used smileyshot2.gif, don't lose any sleep. No harm was done. We readers of ArsTechnica did not notice any unusual slowing because of it.

On the other hand, my expectation was that the link would appear in my post, and a few people would follow suit, and in a few weeks it would hardly ever be seen again. If, however, people start using smileyshot2.gif in their signature, or find themselves inserting it in every other post, then I have made myself a bandwidth bandit (Though it's probably still petty theft)! Also, I didn't ask anyone's permission, though I am quite sure that no one involved is bent on preserving the integrity of their intellectual property rights. (As I said ArsTechnica is not the creator of the graphic)

Linking big pictures is generally a big no-no. I don't really want to trivialize bandwidth stealing with this post. I just want to say that smileyshot2.gif is a more trivial example of the "crime".

ArsTechnica is rather guilty of bandwidth theft themselves. In fact, the smileysex gif has made it's way around to there just this week, though linked off a third UBB site (about the game Quake, I think) Maybe that's why I didn't think twice. I was just raised on the wrong side of the backbone.

And just to provide some sort of penance for my sin, let me cordially invite any of you who are computer tweekers, early adopters, technology enthusiasts, or those who just like to chat with geeks to the news and forums at [ULR]www.arstechnica.com[/URL] and forum.arstechnica.com (http://forum.arstechnica.com) .

Most of the forums are self explanatory. "The Lounge" is Ars' MPSIMS, "The Soapbox" is Great Debates and The BBQ Pit rolled up in one, and "The Battlefront" is Great Debates and the BBQ Pit for technology topics only (Mostly PC vs. Mac, and Windows vs. Linux). We even have "The Agora" for selling and trading computer parts. You can look for me as Jebediah on that board as well. Manhattan, I hope to see you there!

Oh, and if you screw up a UBB tag on the Ars forum, you can go back and edit it!

Ooo, too late at night to edit. My apologies for my spelling, bad grammar, and rambling.

[Lord Jim]

Jebediah, I used the smileshot2.gif as an example. Whether it was a perfect example doesn't mean much. It had certain elements to it that made a good example. It obviously wasn't an image on this board. It wasn't on a user's site. More than one person was using it, which meant it was doubtful that they all had permission. A moderator used it.

I know that in the grand scheme of things, that one smiley isn't a big deal. But, when someone wants to get an even cuter smiley, where does it come from, who is it being stolen from, do they mind? It seemed to be something that could get out of hand and be abused and I thought that the board and the moderators should be made aware of the potential problem. But mostly, that the people here realized that it wasn't the right way to display images.

It wasn't that smiley itself that I was talking about but the principle.

Hopefully, it raised the awareness of better ways of doing things.

Jim

[Irishman]

Thanks Jim B, exactly the information I needed.

[RM Mentock]

Originally posted by TubaDiva posted 02-26-2000 01:38 PM :
See if this doesn't help you see it straight:

&lt;snip&gt;

You may LINK to the object in question, hyperlinks are fine, but you cannot reproduce something in total without consent of the copyright holder.

Isn't that the problem, with bandwidth stealing? Linking to someone else's graphic can overload their server, while yours avoids that problem?

Many times I've been asked by someone if they could link to my pages, and my reaction used to be, well of course. That was before the issue of bandwidth stealing came up. Eventually, I can see where a permission to even link to a page might be required. Some webpages have characteristics similar (in this context) to graphics files.


------------------
rocks

[ThufferinThuccotash]

WHen I made the "having sex" smiley graphic, I put it on my server and then posted it in several messages. I then decided that it wasn't quite right, went back, made changes to the graphic, and uploaded it again to my server. AND THE NEW VERSION SHOWED IN THE OLD THREADS.
This got me thinking, and at the risk of thread hijacking, I'd like to run it by you.

Suppose I create the Felching Smileys™, and encourage everybody to link to my page to use it. It becomes wildly popular, the most ubiquitous net image since the Dancing Hamsters, and all referencing my files on my server space. Sensing a profit opportunity, I sell advertising space based on the prodigious number of downloads of the Felching Smileys™, then create a banner ad with the same name, replacing the original Felching Smileys™ file on my server space. Now this banner is broadcast throughout the world, appearing on homepages and message boards for free, courtesy of these netizen's compulsive desire to use my bandwidth.

Does this make me a bad person? Should I not do this?

------------------
TT

"It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers."
--James Thurber

[Patty O'Furniture]

[quote]the images are never loaded on the SDMB server[quote]

This is not an acceptable answer because it only begs the question: why aren't they? Web servers that I have built receive strict instructions to keep a copy of large files that are referenced from locations outside of the local network (usually a CWW). The specifics are based on the file type & parameters are easily tailored to specific server needs & BW limitations. If TSDMB administrators are really concerned about BW issues of foreign hosts, they could make the necessary adjustments and have their servers keep copies of large files. This would truly be a adopting a be kind to foreign servers stance. I can't think of a reason why a server wouldn't be built without any kind of bandwidth policing.

By disallowing the server to make jpeg & gif copies you force it to do that much more work by having to go out and get a whole new image each time somebody here wants to see it. That makes the implicit statement that the server is managed without regard to BW limitations of foreign hosts. I'd think a client would be royally pissed if I put her server together to work that way.

If and when it ever becomes an issue, it can only be dealt with at the network level because one person is never going to believe that his little 10kb jpeg could generate that much traffic. Even if all 25 of us here in this discussion have learned a lesson, there is still 4800 other registered dopers out there who may never have a clue (or need/want one).

------------------
Given sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine.

[manhattan]

ThufferinThuccotash! You made superscripts! How? Tell me and my science guys in GQ and you will be a God there!

Opus, your proposal won’t/can’t work for the following reason. The UBB software (and no other message board software that I’m aware of) works that way. When a person enters into his/her message a reference to the other site, it acts as an instruction for the viewer’s browser to go look up the image and report it at the appropriate spot on the screen. We wouldn’t even have the first idea how to make the software look up the referenced site, pull the image, store it on the SD server and rewrite the post to refer to the SD server. If however, you’re volunteering to write the code… ;)


------------------
Change Your Password, Please (http://204.95.48.199/cgi-bin/ubbcgi/ubbmisc.cgi?action=getannounce&ForumNumber=3&Start=2451545.99&End=2451911&Session=2451598.1854) and don't use HTML, as it has been disabled

[ThufferinThuccotash]

ThufferinThuccotash! You made superscripts! How? Tell me and my science guys in GQ and you will be a God there!

Well manhatten tell all the science guys the first thing they have to do is dump their Macs and get real computers... (oh, wrong thread, never mind)

OK, what really happened is I just used the Character Map utility under Programs/Accessories/System Tools and selected the ™ character. Yeah, I know, not so impressive when you look behind the wizard's curtain.

You may kiss my ring now.

------------------
TT

"It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers."
--James Thurber

[Patty O'Furniture]

Okay I can accept that, on of the few things I've never had to install on a server is message board software so I can't comment on the limitations of such things.

The character map is a cool applet, but it is missing lots of goodies. For one thing, you can't go any higher than X³, and this is one place where people love to throw big numbers around.

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We cheat the other guys & pass the savings along to you!

[ZenBeam]

Are the SDMB techies (techers?) reading this thread? If not, make 'em. I haven't read anyone saying "I am a SDMB techie/er", but I don't know if that's because they are regulars who dont want to be exposed, or if thay stay away because "That's work." Maybe they'd have some ideas?

------------------
It is too clear, and so it is hard to see.