Oregon political candidate stealing from my website. Advice?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Checking my web logs, I notice that a political candidate’s website is stealing one of my uniquely designed web graphics, directly from my website’s server. I have notices on every page (in big bold letters) forbidding this practice (and it’s commonly known by webmasters to be nasty anyway). But the web designer decided to ignore my wishes and is stealing my graphic and stealing my bandwidth. This irritates me.

So, what to do . . . what to do . . .

I can replace this stolen graphic (it’s a smallish patriotic web “button”) with anything I want and it’ll show up on this guy’s site. I could put some really HUGE graphic up there, or something really nasty (but I won’t be doing that), or just about anything.

I am 50/50 on this. Part of me just wants to email the webmaster and tell him to stop stealing my bandwith and chew him out a little. The other part of me wants to do a little mischief.

If I do a little mischief, I don’t want it to be anything mean. I just want it to be a little funny, or whacky. Perhaps so subtle that it won’t be noticed for a long while. And I’m soliciting ideas (or, just talk me into emailing the site—I’m open to that too).

I realize that the candidate probably didn’t have any knowledge of the bandwidth theft and for all I know he’s a stand-up guy. So if I do any mischief, I want it to be pretty harmless.

Thinking more about it, actually, I definitely want someone other than the webmaster to know about this. The website looks pretty professional, and the web designer REALLY should know by now that they cannot steal bandwidth like that. So I’d like someone else to know what they’ve done too. Just to keep them honest.

I mentioned in the title that this guy is from Oregon. I will not tell you his name or political party. He does not look like he’s a big-shot politician, but I don’t really know. If any of you Oregon Dopers want to email me privately to ask for this guy’s site so you can tell me a little more about him, please do so. But do not reveal the site’s URL or the candidate’s name here. I want that to remain private.

So, I await your wisdom! What to do . . . what to do . . .

2

Hail to the mischief!

Can you find out if the other webmaster is using IMG tag with size attributes, or just the IMG? If the latter, I know you said you don’t want to, but it’d be soooo sweet to go for a really big one telling people to vote for another candidate. It’ll be a short burst, like a meteorite, but beautiful.

Alternatively, a subtle altering of the graphic? Making it utterly surreal, or just promoting a policy that is at odds with the candidate?

3

Label the button “Would you trust a thief?”

4

Please tell me it’s a Gif. If so, I’d animate it and have it brielfy change to a different frame every, oh, 40 seconds or so. Make your own subliminal advertising!

5

jjimm: your ideas are brilliantly creative and evil, but alas, this time I cannot use them. (Unless some Oregon Doper provides me with compromising pictures of this guy with a farm animal—in which case, all bets are off.)

don’t ask: yeah, I’d use that if I thought the candidate was the webmaster (since he or she is the real thief), but so far I have no idea and I kind of doubt it. Good idea, though.

Dakota Dog: YES! It is a gif! And I like the way you think. I’d love to create an animation that flashes something like the word “Badger” and then “mushroom” and maybe a flash of some completely unrelated picture (cat head, flower, hammer, sandal) for a split second now and then. Just to be . . . odd. That’s the kind of thing I’m looking for! Yes!

Keep 'em coming!

6

Personally, I’d replace it with the nastiest, most offensive pic I could find. Goatse, maybe… :eek:

7

Ooh, I totally agree with DakotaDog. A random word flashing for 01. second, every 30 seconds or so, then back to the original image.

How about some SDMB classics.

When come back bring pie

1920’s style “death ray”

8

Chew out the web master, how hard is your choice.

Tell her/him that you’ll be changing the gif within 48 hours.

Change said gif 24 hours later with something fun like a rasberry blowing smiley and watch to see if it is in use on the offending web site.

Have a cool drink and enjoy yourself.

Just my advice.

9

How about the words, “Oregon sucks”?

Not that Oregon actually sucks or anything like that. It’s very verdant.

10

Not mischevious, but why don’t you email the candidate? He may like to know that his webmaster is infringing copyright.

11

I agree with gex gex. E-mail the candidate. Make sure you get a “real” reply and not just a form letter. Watch your stats. If they’re still stealing your content after a reasonable interval, change the image to something subversive or offensive. (e.g., don’t ask’s “Would you trust a thief?” suggestion; or a photo of the cadidate with a penis in place of his nose.)

If your stats show that the image is no longer being pulled from your site, be sure to check the candidate’s web page to see if the webmaster simply copied the image to his server and is still stealing your image. If such is the case, you can contact the Oregon media and let them know that the candidate is violating your copyright.

12

To teach him a lesson, you have to teach him a lesson. If you just email him, he’ll probably stop taking the image from your site and start hot-linking from someone else’s. You MUST put up some horribly offensive image. That’s really the only way to get him to never hot-link again.

Checkout Rob Cockerham’s excellent way of dealing with this problem when it happend to him.

13

You could always have it show up as “My webmaster is a thief”.

14

Why not just but a little text at the bottom of your image? “This graphic stolen from www.yosemitebabe.com”

15

I say to change the image contents, but don’t do anything that appears like you’re targeting that politician directly.

How about changing it to a “Go Bin Laden” or “Free Saddam” image?

16

yosemitebabe, I’m in OR. I just sent you an email; send me the link(s) and I’ll let you know what I know about him.

17

Something disturbing, like for example: “Hail Satan,” or “I like young boys feet.”

18

Replace the current gif with a Firefly banner or related image to promote the upcoming movie. :smiley:

19

Just seeing the thread title made me instantly think of a really great solution and I am surprised no one has posted this:

Alert the media.

They love stories about politicians being jerks.

For Oregon, the Oregonian is the big paper. Be sure to contact a political reporter rather than just send a general “to whom it may concern” email.

Also contact the jerk’s “hometown” paper.

Then there are national outlets. fark.com loves this sort of thing.

20

I second this. It doesn’t implicate the candidate, just the webmaster.