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Fuddruckers Called Out on Hotlinking 668
naught writes "Fuddruckers, a hamburger chain, hotlinked to a flash game developer's Burgertime clone on their 'Fuddrockers' page. When the developer noticed an abnormal amount of traffic coming from their website, he decided to let the company know how he felt -- and maybe teach them about hotlinking.." From the post: "So, I redirected everything coming from Fuddruckers.com. (learned all about .htaccess files also... neat!) Wrote a nice little message pointing out how incredibly stupid their web developer is. And then redirected the main page to a pleasant little website showing photographs of slaughterhouses. And also opened up some more popups, for those that don't have popup blockers."
Obviously he wasn't a Slashdotter... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Obviously he wasn't a Slashdotter... (Score:2)
Re:Obviously he wasn't a Slashdotter... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Obviously he wasn't a Slashdotter... (Score:3, Interesting)
You can read about it in this blog entry [xcski.com].
Re:Obviously he wasn't a Slashdotter... (Score:3, Informative)
No such luck here. About a year ago, I noticed that a customs broker was linking to a logo on my website. The logo, which I made myself, is for a very prominent company that's also about 125 years old (no, it's not Bell Telephone) and a notorious croporate welfare bum.
So I replaced the icon with one that scrolled "$C
What am I missing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What am I missing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What am I missing? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you don't want people accessing resources you make publicly available on the public internet then don't make them publicly available.
Re:What am I missing? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What am I missing? (Score:3, Insightful)
True, it's not very polite, but the author took an extremely juvenile response. I would think twice about commissioning him to write software for me in future.
Re:What am I missing? (Score:3, Insightful)
The only thing wrong about it is you failing to use technical means to keep this file private for only you and your friends via password or some such, as well as negotiating a poor hosting contract with your provider which would make you liable for something of this
Re:What am I missing? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What am I missing? (Score:3, Insightful)
What are YOU missing? (Score:4, Insightful)
B) Corporate entity hotlinked said work so that the creator would have to foot the bandwidth bill
I don't think the creator would have mind much if he had his work used with permission and was hosted on Fuddrucker's servers. Hell, I would have taken it as an honor. This isn't a random teenager hotlinking some crazy photoshop on his Angelfire site, this is a major corporation stealing someone's work and bandwidth. Fuddruckers not only stole his work and claimed it as their own, but they stole his bandwidth at the same time. And they profited from their theft, while he was left with the bandwidth expenses.
Information should be free, but people's hard work and creativity should be rewarded. If someone is profiting off someone else's work, then the creater deserves compensation, unless he specifically allows it. I even ask permission from the site owner or creator before taking things and using them on my site. It's common curtesy. Just because it's on the Internet doesn't mean it's free to just take and profit from.
Re:What are YOU missing? (Score:3, Insightful)
Ah yes, especially the hard work of someone who is stealing and copying from the creators of burgertime.
"while he was left with the bandwidth expenses."
And somehow his hotlinking to the slaughterhouse images from another host who now has to foot the bill is somehow ok?
Weird sense of morality you have. Fudruckers should not have hotlinked to his site. But face it, by any measure this guy is a total asshole for trying to shock and offend people. Ther
Re:What am I missing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Furthermore... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Furthermore... (Score:3, Interesting)
The word has been redefined (Score:5, Insightful)
People have gradually redefined the word, though, and now it no longer carries positive connotations. The current definition of "hotlink" is something like "to embed content in your web site which references an absolute URI on another web site." This practice used to be called image stealing or bandwidth stealing, but I guess those weren't buzzword-worthy enough.
I guess even with that definition, what Fuddrucker's did doesn't really qualify. What they're really guilty of is just plain asshattery, and it's possible that the "victim" is just perpetrating more of the same. His LiveJournal post includes this edit:
So, presumably, he's not hosting the slaughterhouse images himself, but he's redirecting Fuddrucker's traffic to innocent third parties... The very thing he's pissed off at Fuddrucker's for doing.
Re:The word has been redefined (Score:3, Interesting)
Was it impolite and deceitful? Definitely, but not much more so than the response.
Re:The word has been redefined (Score:3, Insightful)
Fuddrucker's wasn't embedding anything, the guy's blog entry makes it clear that this was a case of them linking to his Flash game; he's even posted a screenshot of it. The game isn't embedded into any page at fuddruckers.com. There was a link on fuddruckers.com that pointed to the Flash file, and if you clicked the link, it loaded the game from this guy's website.
Tacky, yes. "Stealing" ba
Depending on stuff you don't control (Score:3, Informative)
I regularly get people including my photos (
Re:What am I missing? (Score:3, Insightful)
But this isn't just direct linking, it's embedding the game into your own site as if it were part of your own site, while making someone else do all the work, and pay the bill.
Linking is not the same as hotlinking. The former is what makes the web, the latter is stealing.
Re:What am I missing? (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a quite obvious URL and credits in the flash game itself. They're not giving anybody the impression that they did it themselves.
Was it appropriate to hotlink the file, making it harder for users to get to his site? No. Is anybody being fooled about where it is coming from? No.
This isn't nearly so big a deal as you or even the original author is making it to be (He isn't even seeing much traffic/bandwidth from them). At worst it is a lack of curtesy that could have been easily solved by contacting the site hosting it and requesting they link to the HTML page instead of the flash file directly.
The author chose, instead of the proper thing (contacting these "fuddruckers" people), posting graphic images. The author is now just as guilty as the people doing the hotlinking were, because he mishandled the situation so badly.
Re:What am I missing? (Score:3, Insightful)
Nonsense, the author is in *no way* guilty. He can do whatever the hell he wants with his own content hosted on his own server, as long as he's not breaking any laws.
The web developer at fuddruckers got exactly what he deserved for being such a fool.
while pranks like this are fun and all.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Is this still up? Lol :-) (Score:2, Informative)
If someone steals what I am saying, and puts it on their own site, then sues me when i change what I say, screw them!
Good for him!
Poo: fuddruckers.com is down. Oh, slashdot?
To confirm you're not a script,
please type the word in this image: blithe
random letters - if you are visually impaired, please email us at pater@slashdot.org
You are 100% wrong. (Score:3, Interesting)
If someone steals what I am saying, and puts it on their own site, then sues me when i change what I say, screw them!
That is not what happened. It is more like if you have a website and post words on that website. I read your website, and put a link on my page to your page.
Fuddruckers can sue. They have damages. This guy went out of his way to cause as much harm to Fuddruckers as he could. This guy kn
Modder Fuddruckers (Score:2, Funny)
Just to get this out of the way.. (Score:5, Insightful)
BUT
When you do that, you're pointing people at someone else's content that they can choose to change at any time.
Sure, it's your "right" to link to someone else's page (or else the web wouldn't work), but make sure you don't piss them off or you never know what you'll be pointing to in the future.
To have the right... (Score:3, Insightful)
"To have the right to do something is not the same as being right to do it"
I agree Fuddruckers has the right to link to his site. I agree he has the right to change his content. I completely disagree that he was right to change his content in such a manner.
I mean, this company has just given him a compliment. "Hey", they said. "This game is cool". And how does the complimentee respond? By kicking virtual sand
Re:To have the right... (Score:5, Insightful)
The funniest thing of all is that the amount of bandwidth fuddruckers was taking up was 5% or less, judging by the graph on his site. I mean, sheesh, what a loser this guy is - not only does he get upset that someone thought his work worthwhile enough to link to, but then he actually thinks his response was not only justified but also pretty damn clever. He writes - and you can see him smirking all the way - "But did I do this right away? No! I waited until the Friday evening before a three-day weekend. So either it'll be up for three days, or someone is going to have to go in during their vacation to fix it. My only hope is that an executive from Fuddruckers finds out about it before that happens. Because, really, stupidity like that deserves losing your job over."
So, yes, Fuddruckers should have sent the guy an email out of courtesy, but that's the only way that I can see that they did anything wrong. An acknowledgement on their website would also have been nice, but considering the game clearly states on the main page who it was written by that's hardly necessary. But these things didn't seem to upset the game's author anyway - what he seemed most pissed off about was that Fuddruckers had linked to his game, rather than copying it and hosting it on their site. Now, there's no obvious copyright on the games and nothing to suggest that they're open source or public domain
Re:To have the right... (Score:3, Insightful)
Sometimes, people don't stop and think things through.
Re:To have the right... (Score:3, Insightful)
They didn't really hot-link the game, though, did they? It's just a link - it's not like the game's embedded in the page, any more than this is [briggster.com]
And I don't think
Ass (Score:5, Insightful)
(1) Your game has a URL tag on it, so it's impossible for fuddrucker's to represent it as their own.
(2) Fuddrucker's accounted for only a small portion of total hits, and yet you're complaining about the bandwidth usage?
(3) Despite the evidence that the link was not particularly stressful nor malicious in any way, you went way out of your way to do something incredibly malicious back.
How... bad.
Re:Ass (Score:3, Insightful)
This guy could have sent a note to Fuddruckers telling them to stop. He could have changed the URL and broken their links. He could even have redirected them back to themselves. Instead he decided to be an asshole. Thus the presence of the story on Slashdot.
I agree, the guy is a dick (Score:5, Insightful)
You couldn't email them to find out what was going on? You knew they were "stealing" your game, but you waited? So between the time you knew they were "stealing" and the time you got even, did you give them permission to use your game?
Yeah, that's right. They didn't even bother to download the game and host it themselves. They linked to my game, using my game and my bandwidth to promote their restaurant.
Let me get this right. They put a link on their website. They did not steal your code. They did not pass off the game as their own. I see at the bottom of the game, in BIG LETTERS your email of games@briggster.com. And I see the URL of your webiste.
Since when is putting up a link stealing. I can understand if they put an image on your website and hotlink it, that is theft. But since when is linking the same as stealing?
So, if I put a link on my website to The Onion, am I stealing from The Onion every time someone who visits my page then goes to visit theirs? Because I see you link to a ton of stuff from your blog. Did you get permission from each and every place before you linked to their website?
And how much traffic did Fudruckkers send your way? Looking at that pie graph, it looks like 2% or so. Who is that Saionji.net? They are "stealing" far more from you.
This guy should be arrested. He knew that Fuddruckers was linking. He did nothing about it. He waited until he could hurt Fuddruckers the most.
This is no different than if I see a neighbors kid walking on MY lawn. It is MY property. But I don't tell the kid to stop doing it. Instead I wait the day before the kids family has their summer vacation trip, with paid airline tickets. Then I dig a small hole, and cover it up with leaves. I put nails all over, and cover them up. I put stuff out for the kid to trip on and get cut up. HA! That will teach them, the family will loose their vacation and I'll have shown them.
This guy is a waste of a human life. In days with people suffering because of Katrina, this guy wants to cause a little more suffering. Instead of being proud that someone thought his game was good enough to link to, this guy decided to be a dick. He is no different than the looters who steal 40 pairs of shoes. He had an oppertunity to hurt someone, and he did it. He did not take even one effort to try and resolve his issue in a civilized way. Hell, Fuddruckers is a fairly large company, if he would have complained nicely, they might have paid him for any bandwith they used. Fuddruckers would not want the bad press. But now, Fuddruckers comes out as the victims, and this guy comes out as the dick. There is a moral to this story that kids should learn.
I am going to laugh when the follow-up story comes out on slashdot, about how Fuddruckers sues his ass.
No, you're just ignorant (Score:4, Insightful)
Second, your analogy is about as relevent to the story as the price of bat shit in Trinidad.
Finally, Fuddruckers doesn't come out as a victim in any imaginable way and they don't have a legal case good enough to survive the first court hearing.
The flash file was his. It was located on his server. What he chooses to do with the files on his own server is his own business.
Re:No, you're just ignorant (Score:3, Insightful)
As for his files on his server, what I choose to do with my files on my server is my business, too. And one of the things I can decide to do is place a line of text in one of *my* files that causes the site visiter to down
Re:No, you're just ignorant (Score:3, Insightful)
Hotlinking is theft? You've got to be kidding me.
Perhaps you're not aware of this, but bandwidth costs money. Having a website hosted costs money. This will probably come as a surprise to you, but hosting companies do not generally provide their services and bandwidth for free. This means that when A embeds B's content into A's website, B pays for it.
Since you think it's not theft, can I come hook up to your telephone line at the junction box and make calls and just let you pay the bill? It's basically t
the fat kid (Score:5, Funny)
Hrmmm..... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a whole new Golden Rule! (Score:5, Insightful)
Apparently, his sense of moral outrage is not transitive.
cute (Score:3, Insightful)
They'll be sorry now! (Score:5, Funny)
Date: Fri, 2 Sep 2005 19:056:32 -0400
To: webmaster
Subject: Complaint about your website
To Whom It May Concern;
Upon returning from a birthday party at one of your restaurants in Atlanta, my ten year old son wanted to look at the Fuddrucker's website. Normally, I am very restrictive on what Joshua may view, but I was confident that the content on your website would be child appropriate.
Much to my dismay, my son became very upset at something he saw on your site. When I went to investigate, I discovered numerous pop-up browser windows detailing how cows are killed and slaughtered, and ground into hamburger meat! This information was thrust upon him when he clicked on a link to a game called "BurgerTime" from your so-called "Fuddrockers" page, which appears to be intended for children.
My child is still upset, and it has taken my wife almost an hour to calm him down. Now he has said he will never eat a hamburger again, and has been repeatedly apologizing for helping "kill the cows".
I am absolutely appalled that you post this sort of information on your website. It is my duty, as a parent, to teach my children where meat comes from.
I can safely say that my family and I will never step foot in another Fuddrucker's restaurant after this traumatic evening.
Justin Daniels
Atlanta, Georgia
I wonder how the slaughterhouse people feel =) (Score:5, Interesting)
What would have been cooler is having all the Slaughterhouse websites retaliate against the Burgertime guy and call him names for using up their content/bandwidth.
Now that's a story =)
But in all seriousness people!` (Score:3, Funny)
www.fuddrruckers.com (Score:4, Informative)
Re:www.fuddrruckers.com (Score:5, Funny)
Re:www.fuddrruckers.com (Score:3, Informative)
>
> These are the dangers of having an outreach program in your IT dept... webmaster on crack rocks.
This is probably a hack on their site
Re:www.fuddrruckers.com (Score:3, Interesting)
What the fuck? (Score:5, Insightful)
FFS, complain to the company, move the file, restrict access from that referrer - but jesus, this is the kind of jackassery that makes people hate the Web.
Re:What the fuck? (Score:5, Insightful)
Television serves up sex and violence on a daily basis and children are exposed to many of the things the "guardians of morality" are decrying. Society hasn't broken down, my country has very low teenage pregnancy rates and a low crime rate. Children do get to see the bad / strange side of the world and that tends to make them more socially engaged, more tolerant and better informed.
There is nothing wrong with showing the customers where meat comes from, even the children. If they can't handle that truth, they shouldn't be eating meat in the first place.
I'm not a vegetarian, I eat meat on a daily basis, but I believe in treating the animals well in life, killing them quickly and slaughtering them efficiently.
Oh and by the way, the word 'cunt' is the most widely used expletive in my language (only it's an adjective around here) it's bandied about by everybody both in real life and on television day and night, even in polite conversation. It lost it's power to shock twenty years ago.
Re:What the fuck? (Score:3, Funny)
Reminds me of the time that the Pope and one of his cardinals were traveling by train. The Pope who was doing a crossword puzzle, looked up and asked his cardinal "What's a four letter word ending in '-unt' that means 'woman'?"
Slashdot Logic (Score:3, Funny)
There's stupid and then there's stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
What I haven't seen is the suggestion that perhaps Mr. Briggs passed up a modestly lucrative opportunity to profit a bit from his originally selfless efforts. After all, it's obvious that someone at Fuddruckers liked his game. He might have been able to convince them to legally purchase the rights, or at least agree to indemnify him if the original creators of the BurgerTime game ever decided to sue Mr. Briggs based on copyright infringement. Perhaps he might have convinced them to purchase a tweaked version of the game, customized for Fuddruckkers.
Instead, he decided to make a rather malicious effort to embarrass them, poisoning any potential commercial relationship. But, the opportunity to rant and show off modest technological l33t skillz was apparently enough to offset the potential of acquiring base, material crap such as money.
Re:There's stupid and then there's stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:There's stupid and then there's stupid (Score:3, Interesting)
And he redirected to a BURGER-RELATED site, so I don't see the problem.
Y'know, this whole discussion has amused me. We have people vehemently arguing that one side or the other should bugger off and die due to the massive evil of their actions.
Fudruckers could have asked permission. They chose not to. He coul
Google (Score:3, Funny)
Nice. (Score:3, Interesting)
I have a similar problem... (Score:3, Interesting)
Burger Time game is copyrighted (Score:4, Insightful)
The same would go for a Tetris or Pacman 'clone. Sorry to say that many of the games that we all think of as generic were designed and programmed by someone and they own it.
As for his actions simply denying access and popping up a message saying that the content is unauthorised due to hot-linking policies asking Fuddruckers to contact him would have been a lot more productive. Was he within his rights to do what he did - yes. Was it a professional thing to do - no. As it stands he is either immature or looking for publicity.
Fun with old hotlinked images... (Score:5, Funny)
Most of these sites are especially crappy, and as such, the bandwidth used wasn't much, so for the time being I didn't do anything about it.
Well, with the removal of the albums directory, I decided to redirect all requests for images in it to this annoyingly animated strobing GIF [nuxx.net]. This has the wonderful affect of making many, many crappy sites blink horribly. Like this [myspace.com] and this [xanga.com].
Re:Fun with old hotlinked images... (Score:3, Funny)
I believe proper 1337 }{aX0r etiquette is to change hotlinked images to goatse.
Waaay overboard (Score:4, Insightful)
Tips (Score:3, Insightful)
1. Is your content stolen are copyrighted by someone else itself? If so, tread carefully or use this as an excuse to say you were complying and removing copyrighted material from your site. Don't attempt to modify the content however
2. Is the hot-linker outside your country? This will add another layer of covering your ass, if not then be careful about what you put up
3. Is your website linked to your real identity? obviously if it is you want to bare that in mind, for your reputation and your legal protection.
4. Subtlety is good, if you can make it look like an accident then all the better, but if you want to put your own personal touch in so they know who they are dealing with. Shock tactics (goatse.cx) are great but remember that is likely to lead to legal action when one of their customers tries to sue them so be careful and follow step 5:
5. Use pop-ups if you want plausible deniability. Most people use IE and most IE users have pop-up infested machines anyway - you could always blame it on that and most non-technical people wont challenge it. BTW I said pop-ups, I didn't say how big they should be, take advantage.
6. Don't abuse the target pages copyrighted material, logos etc, don't use javascript to attack their page in any way outside of the given construct of the hot-link, that might be seen as breaking in somehow
I think the most effective thing would have been to replace the game with a single image of a burger being made with a turd.
www.fuddruckers.com now points to google.com (Score:5, Informative)
Now Fuddruckers has stolen Google!!! (Score:3, Informative)
[let history show that the above link is redirecting all traffic to www.google.com in an attempt to live through the
This is genius (Score:3)
1. That they aren't taking up that much of his bandwidth... Who cares? That's not the point. They are using his creative work to promote their product and giving him no credit. People normally get paid when a company uses their work this way.
2. That he is missing out on an opportunity to get more exposure or some sweet marketing deal from this... Bullshit. They have shown they are willing to steal his work. Why in the hell would he want to make a deal with someone like that???
3. That all those poor little children don't deserve to be accosted by these foul images of slaughterhouses... That's just too bad. There's a lot of things about the real world that are distressing. It's not this guy's job to protect them from it all.
What he did was an excellent way to get revenge on these bastards. He might not have a copyright claim (since they hotlinked instead of copying), but at least he can get some laughs at their expense.
Hotlinking vs Hyperlinking (Score:3, Insightful)
Domain.com [domain.com]
With a hyperlink, the owner of a site acknowledges Domain.com as the creator of content, and links to the site to show people its content.
Hotlinking:
With hotlinking, the visitor never knows that domain.com is the provider of the image used. Domain.com gets no exposure, has no opportunity to generate revenue, and has to foot a bill for bandwidth.
A few posters have mentioned that the game authors email and url were on the front of the game, but that is honestly irrelevant. Would Fudruckers have linked to him if he did not have the URL on his game? Also, if Fudruckers would have linked to an HTML page on his site, he would have had an opportunity to place banner ads on his page to generate some revenue. By displaying the game directly, only 1% of the visitors might actually click that link, which gives him less of an opportunity to generate revenue.
Nobody has the right to hotlink to content. Yes, there are ways to block hotlinking, but a webmaster should not be obligated to prevent people from doing so. If I leave my house unlocked, that does not give the public the right to walk in.
Game Over... *beoeoeoeoeo... wut-wut* (Score:3, Informative)
Steal the bandwidth, or steal the work? (Score:5, Interesting)
Fuddruckers, take notice of this practice... such a hard concept... of downloading the game and HOSTING IT YOURSELF... versus stealing other's bandwidth...
Under some theories of netiquette, linking to an HTML page that references a Flash file is more polite than copying the Flash file to your own server because the former is normal use of the World Wide Web and the latter is copyright infringement. To put it into RIAA terms, "stealing" bandwidth is preferable to "stealing" a work of authorship.
Re:Steal the bandwidth, or steal the work? (Score:5, Insightful)
of course, the poor webmaster whose server got slammed also did the right thing. the challenge of people "hotlinking" your content and "stealing" your bandwidth is best countered by technological measures -- not by rules, laws, or complaints. by employing the tools contained in a vast, featureful web server, he was able to stop fuddrucker's from using his content in a way he didn't approve, as well as solve a technological problem using the appropriate means -- not by making threats and demands.
on the internet, controlling the use of your content is simple. configure your software to transmit it only to those whom you'd like to have it.
Re:Steal the bandwidth, or steal the work? (Score:5, Insightful)
Who wouldn't want the traffic to their blog/site/whatever? Bump your ad revenue! That's the missing ???? step to profit.
As has been noted, the Fudd's traffic was roughly 5% of his bandwidth, so spare us the "excessive bandwidth charges" sob story.
If you didn't want the traffic, just block it. Redirect it back to Fudd's. Whatever. Don't react like a 13 year old.
And finally: For me this is the best part. He ranted about being hotlinked without notice... this is EXACTLY what he did to the slaughterhouse folks, and even noted with apparent amusement that their sites were being "hammered" (his words). Don't bitch about netiquette and then hose the next guy in exactly the same manner.
Fuddrucker's did nothing fundamentally wrong. They lacked some social graces and failed the common coutesy test, but did nothing malicious, immoral or illegal. The BurgerTime guy trumped all of that.
Re:Steal the bandwidth, or steal the work? (Score:4, Insightful)
don't put it up without password authentication if you want some measure of "control".
fuddruckers and anyone else on the web have a right to link to whatever they want.
that's what the web is all about.
and talk about netequette.. the poor webmaster redirected the output to a virtual goatse picture or whatever.
they both messed up but the webmaster of the site in question is clearly unhappy that the hippie communists have the nerve and daring to link to his precious content.
if it's available to the public, you have every right to link to it. there is no STEALING involved here whatsoever. NETequette is a different matter.
Re:Steal the bandwidth, or steal the work? (Score:4, Informative)
" A misspelling of 'referrer' which somehow made it into the HTTP standard. A given web page's referer (sic) is the URL of whatever web page contains the link that the user followed to the current page. Most browsers pass this information as part of a request."
Re:Steal the bandwidth, or steal the work? (Score:3, Informative)
2. If your definition of "culturally ignorant" is "doesn't know how many 'r's are in a single word" then I'm hardly hurt by your calling me that. Especially considering I myself am an Australian citizen, not a "Yank".
3. A Google search of "pages from the UK" for "referrer" yields 2.5 million results [google.co.uk] while "referer" yields 226,000 [google.co.uk].
4. And finally and perhaps most conclusively, the Oxford Dictionary Online returns no results for "referer", but a defi
Slashdot calling the kettle black? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Steal the bandwidth, or steal the work? (Score:3, Interesting)
Screw that. I've had my own content stolen and misused in the past. If I was looking for a web developer, this is the kinda guy I'd want: one that can take a sneaking, thieving idiot like that and turn the tables. Kinda reminds me of baiting Nigerian email scammers... (sniffs back a tear)
Way to go, man!
Re:Steal the bandwidth, or steal the work? (Score:4, Insightful)
IF the "company webmonkey" even acknowledged his email how long do you think it would have taken them to change the site. In my experience corporate entities (I work in IT for a fairly large one) take quite a bit of time to do much of anything that doesn't affect their bottom line.
Perhaps you might want to take a look at his site. Something tells me he isn't really looking for marketing revenue. If you look closely you'll see he has no advertising on what appears to be a personal website.
His way, while possibly juvenile, was also a much quicker way of resolving the issue.
I'm sure he's falling all over himself in a panic that you're unwilling to hire him as a software guy, though.
Re:Steal the bandwidth, or steal the work? (Score:5, Insightful)
Here is a fellow, in a moment of juveline petulance, destroyed a potential business opportunity (eg. "I'll write you an even better game for $$$"), to say nothing about damaging his reputation. The Internet is just full of people who react without thinking. . . He forgets the great rule of everything -- two stupids don't make a smart.
He didn't have to do anything more complicated than take content down and write a polite email.
Re:Steal the bandwidth, or steal the work? (Score:3)
Sorry, but business opportunities create wealth, jobs, and prosperity. People who think in terms of business opportunities are the entrepreneurs of today and the inventors of tommorrow. They're the self-reliant types who don't have to worry when Ford closes yet another assembly line staffed by day-shift drones.
And not every business opportunity is automatically a soul-ravenging, evironmentally destructive, zero-s
Re:Steal the bandwidth, or steal the work? (Score:3, Interesting)
In anything, from business to the arts to sports, there's going to be a top 5%. And a bottom 5%. And everything in between. But of course, your world view precludes admitting that in any of those categories those people worked to get to that position, or that they contribute anything, or that they make jobs for "hard working americans" possible.
Profit. Yeah, the nasty p-word. Never mind that it m
Re:Steal the bandwidth, or steal the work? (Score:4, Insightful)
Likewise a simple phone call from the Fuddruckers web developer could have resulted in a win for both organizations. I've gotten permission for music, pictures, articles, movies all kinds of stuff just for asking. Most times it's worked out well for both of us and more than once I made contacts that were useful on future projects.
Personal communication, what a concept, huh?
Re:Steal the bandwidth, or steal the work? (Score:3, Insightful)
It's kind of like printing out your website and putting it in a box you leave downtown that says "FREE" on it. Do you have any right to complain about people taking multiple copies and telling their friends?
Likewise, this is Slashdot. Any complaint about linking to peoples' sites and using up bandwidth is pure hypocrisy as you're currently on a site
Re:Steal the bandwidth, or steal the work? (Score:3, Insightful)
You asked (Score:3, Informative)
The court ruled that framing was copyright infringement.
Re:Steal the bandwidth, or steal the work? (Score:3, Insightful)
As it stands, it's a matter of courtesy (of the linker) and technological controls (of the linked).
Re: Sounds like slashdot, no? (Score:3, Funny)
The fuddrucker effect?
Hotlinking != Hyperlinking (Score:5, Informative)
Hotlinking is the practice of taking someone else's resources, typically images, sounds, flash files, etc, and displaying them inline in your own HTML page. This causes losses to the creator because they still have to pay for the bandwidth of serving the file, but reap no benefits. For example, the creator may have advertising around the page with the Flash game that never gets seen.
Hotlinking is generally seen as very bad form among web developers.
Take the time to RTFA... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Take the time to RTFA... (Score:3)
Do you have evidence for this, because if you do it would certainly turn the tables on him... but it was not in TFA and I do not know of this guy's reputation, please cite a source to show this is indeed a 'fact'.
As for "...he chose to do something incredibly malicious..." well I disagree. If someone stole something from me, i.e. took my creation and passed it off for their own commercia
Re:Take the time to RTFA... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, he did write a Burgertime clone, was he the original Burgertime creator? Does he have a notice posted giving the original creators of Burgertime credit? Nope.
>As for "...he chose to do something incredibly malicious..." well >I disagree. If someone stole something from me
Noone stole from him. They LINKED to a game on his website. That game still had a splash with his website URL and contact info.
>If Fuddruckers had an ounce of decency they should reimburse >the expenses this guy has incurred on their behalf (while not >his major referred, they still consumed finite resources).
He put content on the WWW. Fuddruckers LINKED to it. They did not do anything wrong! That is the way the internet works. You put things on the internet, people find them and link to them. Just because a company did it they need to reimburse someone
Re:Take the time to RTFA... (Score:3, Insightful)
Now they are pointing the www.fuddruckers.com to an individual vip on google... not even a cname pointing to www.google.com.. so now one cluster of google servers is getting more traffic then others since they are bypassing any layer 3 load balancing that google might be doing...
What kind of IT staff do they have? Are they contracting out all this stuff?
In my view, what the Burgertime clone guy did was the fast way to get a co
Re:Take the time to RTFA... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not to mention, at the linked site it says "EDIT: Apparently the slaughterhouse sites are getting hammered... they might take a while to load."
Does this mean that he's stealing bandwidth from slaughterhouse sites by not even bothering to host the pictures himself?
That's what I think. After all, he says that those sites are getting hammered now with the valid assumption that it's because of him.
Pot, kettle, blacker.
Re:Owned (Score:3, Interesting)
exactly, paypal (Score:3, Insightful)
What an opportunity wasted for a developer.
He could have sold branded exhanced versions of the game to fudruckers to put on their own side, with burger discounts for folk who reach new high scores etc.
He sure missed the (3) ??? and therefore the (4) profit.
Shame! He shoulda read slashdot more often, then he would have known what to do.
Sam
Re:please educate me, Oh Mighty /. : why is this b (Score:5, Informative)
The Fuddrucker's site doesn't give the URL and email, that's only showing up in the game itself. Fudd's doesn't credit the author in any way on their own site.
Furthermore, as several have already noted, this type of link also constitutes bandwith theft.
Wouldn't a small-time flash developer want this sort of exposure?
No. I can say that with utmost confidence, being one myself.
Doing some sort of goatse move to poor kids who are expecting to play a game is just wrong. This guy should be taken to court or something for indecent exposure.
RTFA. He didn't put up anything obscene, he put up images from a slaughterhouse. And even if he had put up something obscene, the idea of taking him to court would be ridiculous. He's free to put whatever content he likes on his own site (provided the content itself is legal), and he's not obligated to preserve anything that someone else links to.
Re:Two wrongs.. (Score:3, Funny)
# while true ; do
> wget http://games.briggster.com/media/burgertime.swf [briggster.com]
> rm burgertime.swf
> done
*yawn* Goodnight.