Ladro Della Foto

It has either happened or will happen to everyone who puts their photos on the web. Someone, somewhere decides that they either want to “borrow” your photo and steal it without your knowing, hotlink it without your permission, or- if they are a really good person- ask for your permission to borrow your photo for whatever reason.

I can’t speak for everyone who has experienced this, but whenever I find that someone hotlinked to a photo of mine- especially without permission- a red haze consumes my sight and my stomach knots up. I then spend the next hour or so changing the file name of my image, tweaking various lines of coding, and hunting for a suitable image to replace the stolen one with. I have yet to find any of my images actually stolen rather than hotlinked, but I’m sure my reaction would be even stronger if I were to discover someone took credit for an image of mine. “What’s the big deal?” hotlink perpetrators have asked me. Well, you’re fuckin’ stealing my photos, you assholes. That’s the big deal. And in most cases, you are stealing someone’s bandwidth and costing them more money. Really, at least link back to my website so that I can get a little more traffic.

It angers me to no end that people think it’s okay to just link your photo to their site and not even give you proper credit or spend the energy to click their mouse a couple of times and type out a quick e-mail asking for permission. It angers me even more when I find a hotlinked photo and read comments from others about how beautiful the photo in question is. I imagine the photo-thief basking in the congratulatory glow of their monitor while I quiver in the dank shadows of my apartment with a cloud of rage chilling the room. Is their need for attention so immediate that they can’t find a camera and take some of their own photos? One of the bastards was even a student at my school- the University of Washington- where there so happen to be numerous scanners available for free. Something about the internet gives people a false sense of “take now for free, suffer no consequences later”. It’s the same thing as pirating music, but different. When pirating music, it’s easy to brush it off by saying, “CDs cost too much. The music industry is ripping consumers off.” Even though we’re told piracy is a bad thing, it’s true- CDs do cost too much and the music industry is ripping consumers off and not giving artists a fair share of the profits. However, when stealing an image from a personal website, that justification doesn’t work. It may not damage the creator’s revenue since they aren’t a corporation, but the damage is far worse; it’s an insult on a personal level.

I’ve had at least one person hotlink one of my photos, and I’ve had many more ask for permission. I make it a point to grant permission to all those who ask- especially since every person who’s asked so far has wanted to use a photo for noncommercial reasons. For the hotlinkers, the first time I posted a HUGE nude picture that consumed a mass amount of screen space on the bulletin board where my picture had been hotlinked. The second time, I created this nifty little image. Thank whatever deity is listening to me right now that I didn’t use a porno or other offensive image, because the second perpetrator was a person who had asked for permission. Through a lack of information and really confusing circumstances (i.e. using a blog site rather than UW webspace, no name on their site, etc.), he had appeared to be yet another hotlinker.

I think I’ll make it into a poster- the image, that is. I seem to get pissed off at such stupid things so easily and then rant about them on this website that it only seems fitting to have a poster of this hanging next to my desk.