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Fuddruckers Called Out on Hotlinking 668

Posted by Zonk from the good-burgers-bad-move dept.
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."
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Fuddruckers Called Out on Hotlinking More

Fuddruckers Called Out on Hotlinking

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  • Obviously he wasn't a Slashdotter... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Alioth ( 221270 ) <no@spam> on Saturday September 03, 2005 @01:34AM (#13468884) Journal
    Obviously this guy wasn't a Slashdotter, or he'd have linked to our favorite image... the Goatse Guy!

  • What am I missing? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by coupland ( 160334 ) * <<moc.liamtoh> <ta> <esahcd>> on Saturday September 03, 2005 @01:35AM (#13468888) Journal
    Wait a minute... So someone is punishing another person for using a hotlink on the web? Someone has spent too much time sniffing the corporate glue of "we own everything!". The web is *about* linking, and open data structures, and access to information. How does information suddenly become inviolate if it's not splashed with corporate logos? If you don't want it to be seen by the world, don't publish it to the world...

    • Re:What am I missing? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by PipOC ( 886408 ) on Saturday September 03, 2005 @01:39AM (#13468905) Homepage
      Fuddruckers did this without so much as giving credit to the author, let alone using their own bandwidth to host it. They passed it off as their own material.

      • Re:What am I missing? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by iCEBaLM ( 34905 ) on Saturday September 03, 2005 @02:04AM (#13468986)
        The credit to the author is in the titlescreen of the game, even his own URL. Why duplicate work?

        If you don't want people accessing resources you make publicly available on the public internet then don't make them publicly available.
      • So the link to the originating website at the bottom of the pop-up window isn't "credit?" Yeah, it's stupid of a large restaurant chain to link to another site because the content may change, but I think he overreacted. On his little bandwidth graph, fuddruckers was far from being the worst bandwidth hog. He could have just sent them a letter and if it was anything other than a large restaurant chain, he probably would have.
      • You'll notice that at the bottom of the page where they link to the game that they say who it's made by and provide a link to his site.

        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)

      by benna ( 614220 ) *
      The problem is that the way fuddruckers did the link, it looked like it was part of their site.

    • What are YOU missing? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by TheStupidOne ( 872664 ) on Saturday September 03, 2005 @01:54AM (#13468944)
      A) Corporate entity used someone's work without their permission, solely to gain traffic.
      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)

        by bogie ( 31020 )
        "but people's hard work and creativity should be rewarded. "

        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)

      by mixmasterjake ( 745969 ) on Saturday September 03, 2005 @01:57AM (#13468954)
      Because all information should be free. Uh, except MY information, I mean. My work is copyrighted so keep your damn links away! All corporate information should be free, though. That's what I mean. Screw the man!

    • Furthermore... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by CarbonJackson ( 540580 ) on Saturday September 03, 2005 @01:59AM (#13468965) Homepage
      He has the URL of his website right there on the opening screen. So while they're stealing what looked to be 5% of his traffic, they're also directing people to his website. Wow, someone in corporate America assumed a little bit too much, what would have been wrong with a polite to the webmaster? And why not just change the URL? Instead he decides to expose people to graphic images because they made the mistake of going to the Fudrucker's website? Sheesh. Chill out.

    • The word has been redefined (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Motherfucking Shit ( 636021 ) on Saturday September 03, 2005 @02:14AM (#13469017) Journal
      So someone is punishing another person for using a hotlink on the web?
      I imagine you, like me, recall the day when "hotlink" was just another term for "link." Back then, having as many "hotlinks" to you as possible was a great thing.

      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:

      EDIT: Apparently the slaughterhouse sites are getting hammered... they might take a while to load.
      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.
      • I don't get it... as far as I can see from his images, they didn't "embed" his content or hotlink it per se. What they did was open it in a new window (not hotlinking), but hide the URL bar so as to "obscure" (poorly) the fact that the content was on another site entirely. So was it misleading? Yes, somewhat. Was it hotlinking, in the usual sense? No.

        Was it impolite and deceitful? Definitely, but not much more so than the response.
    • The real problem is more of an ethical one than something legal. Of course, you can link. No problem. But it was stupid to do without making some kind of agreement with the game's author. I'm sure if they'd asked, he would have been happy to make a deal with them. Since they didn't, they learned a lesson about just including other people's content willy-nilly. Imagine the damage to their image had he used some really filthy image - that's a big risk to take.

      I regularly get people including my photos (
  • wasn't the POINT of the internet to be able to link anywhere at any time? /. has bashed sites before for there linking policies and legal action over "deeplinking", so whats the problem with this instance?
  • This is funny, I would have done the same thing. They cannot counter sue because they had no business.

    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
    • This is funny, I would have done the same thing. They cannot counter sue because they had no business.

      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

  • Those modder fuddruckers! Every modder fuddurcking time I see that modder fuddrucking restaurant, I start cussing like a modder fuddrucker.

  • Just to get this out of the way.. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by XaXXon ( 202882 ) <<xaxxon> <at> <gmail.com>> on Saturday September 03, 2005 @01:43AM (#13468916) Homepage
    No one is saying that Fuddruckers can't link to someone else's site.

    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)

      by mccalli ( 323026 )
      The exact wording might be incorrect, but the quote which springs to mind readily is this one:

      "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)

        by shellbeach ( 610559 ) on Saturday September 03, 2005 @03:31AM (#13469217)
        And how does the complimentee respond? By kicking virtual sand in their face because it generates too much interest. Something wrong with just putting a static 'Thanks for the interest, but we can't cope with the bandwidth right now' message up? Ie. being pleasant and polite?

        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 ... so surely it would have been much worse if Fuddruckers had copied the game and placed it on their site!? That would have been a possible breach of copyright, after all!
        • Not only that, but he hotlinked to another site himself. Did he ask permission first?

          Sometimes, people don't stop and think things through.

  • Ass (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MattW ( 97290 ) <matt@ender.com> on Saturday September 03, 2005 @01:53AM (#13468941) Homepage
    Note to flash guy: you're an ass and a publicity hound.

    (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)

      by Brandybuck ( 704397 )
      It's the Slashdot ethic. You're allowed to be an asshole in reaction to other assholes.

      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)

      by John Seminal ( 698722 ) on Saturday September 03, 2005 @03:26AM (#13469207) Journal
      from the idiots website: 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.

      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)

        by mikeswi ( 658619 ) * on Saturday September 03, 2005 @04:29AM (#13469362) Homepage Journal
        First of all, learn the difference between hyperlinking and hotlinking. Hyperlinking means you link to another site from your own, which is what you were talking about. Hotlinking means you load something on your site that is located on someone else's site. The other site has to deal with the bandwidth use of both sites. That's THEFT.

        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.
        • That's not theft, that's you being ignorant and part of the problem. If you publish something on the web, you are allowing people to link to it. That's just how it works, and it's how it was intended to work. You don't like it, and that's tough for you. Don't publish on the web, then.

          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

  • the fat kid (Score:5, Funny)

    by advocate_one ( 662832 ) on Saturday September 03, 2005 @01:55AM (#13468947)
    on the fuddruckers webpage isn't a very good advert for their product... really... the kid is already obese...

  • Hrmmm..... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by toastyman ( 23954 ) <toasty@dragondata.com> on Saturday September 03, 2005 @01:58AM (#13468962) Homepage
    So, you're upset someone is using something you created without giving you credit or asking permission, but you copied the gameplay and name from another company's game without crediting them in any way or getting permission?

  • It's a whole new Golden Rule! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by tmoertel ( 38456 ) on Saturday September 03, 2005 @01:59AM (#13468963) Homepage Journal
    Let me get this straight. This guy is outraged that a high-traffic site would link to him, chewing up his bandwidth, and his "solution" is to redirect all of that traffic to some other sites that host pictures of slaughterhouses, driving those poor guys into ground:
    EDIT: Apparently the slaughterhouse sites are getting hammered... they might take a while to load.
    I guess his Golden Rule reads like this: Feel free to do unto others what has been done to you.

    Apparently, his sense of moral outrage is not transitive.

  • cute (Score:3, Insightful)

    by X_Caffeine ( 451624 ) on Saturday September 03, 2005 @02:01AM (#13468973)
    cute, but isn't this guy now stealing bandwidth from slaughterhouses?

  • They'll be sorry now! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 03, 2005 @02:03AM (#13468979)
    From: Justin Daniels
    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)

    by starvingartist12 ( 464372 ) on Saturday September 03, 2005 @02:04AM (#13468984) Homepage

    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)

    by bobbyw ( 890344 ) on Saturday September 03, 2005 @02:04AM (#13468987)
    Now how the fuck am I going to play burgertime?

  • www.fuddrruckers.com (Score:4, Informative)

    by matthew.thompson ( 44814 ) <{ku.oc.ytilautca} {ta} {ttam}> on Saturday September 03, 2005 @02:05AM (#13468991) Journal
    Is anyone else just getting the google homepage when they go to www.fuddruckers.com ?

  • What the fuck? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Mirkon ( 618432 ) <mirkon@noSPam.gmail.com> on Saturday September 03, 2005 @02:10AM (#13469005) Homepage
    Talk about "incredibly stupid" web developers, how about a guy who redirects unsuspecting consumers to his personal diatribe and some intrusive pop-ups?

    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.

  • Slashdot Logic (Score:3, Funny)

    by oskard ( 715652 ) on Saturday September 03, 2005 @02:11AM (#13469008)
    Let me get this straight. Homeboy complains about his bandwidth getting jacked, thus DoSing his web server. So we slashdot him? BRILLIANT.

  • There's stupid and then there's stupid (Score:5, Insightful)

    by The Empiricist ( 854346 ) on Saturday September 03, 2005 @02:13AM (#13469015)
    Most of the comments seem to focus on the morality of what the Fuddruckers webmaster (of html-peon) did or on what Mr. Briggs did. I think I even saw a comment on how stupid Fuddruckers must be.

    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)

      by patio11 ( 857072 ) on Saturday September 03, 2005 @02:59AM (#13469126)
      Exactly. Why couldn't he have made a five minute phone call? "Hiya, glad you like my flash game. I was wondering if you'd be interested in purchasing a special Fuddruckers branded version? Given that I already have the game mostly ready, this could be done for very, very cheaply next to your website budget -- you feel free to make an offer, but I'm thinking mid four figures would do nicely. Of course, if you don't take me up on this offer, I'm going to have to ask that you not link directly to my game. It costs me bandwidth, you realize, and you're the only one who benefits." Heck, given that you get someone different from the HTML peon they might be happy to send you money just to eliminate the threat of you suing them.

  • Google (Score:3, Funny)

    by NitsujTPU ( 19263 ) on Saturday September 03, 2005 @02:15AM (#13469021)
    Well, apparently they didn't know how to fix it either, since, now, all requests are going straight to Google.

  • Nice. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by SphericalCrusher ( 739397 ) on Saturday September 03, 2005 @02:19AM (#13469028) Journal
    I've had a similar thing happen to me, although the company was not so big (it was just a single person). I think the idea that they wanted to link to him was pretty cool, because it also promotes his game, but he was right -- they should download it and host it on their site and give more linkback info to him so that people know they didn't create it themselves. It's always a funny sight to find simple vulnerabilities on the net.

  • I have a similar problem... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jred ( 111898 ) on Saturday September 03, 2005 @02:37AM (#13469073) Homepage
    with users of myspace, etc. They're constantly hotlinking my gallery. I run my personal site off my cable connection, and I can always tell when they've done it, my cs:s pings go way the fuck up. I usually turn off apache while I play, then afterwards I swap the pic w/ goatse...

  • Burger Time game is copyrighted (Score:4, Insightful)

    by xirtam_work ( 560625 ) on Saturday September 03, 2005 @03:09AM (#13469155)
    I'm sorry to say that the game that the Flash developer created is based upon a copyrighted arcade game (by Namco I think). He has not credited the owner of the copyright nor asked permission to make his own re-creation of their game. He even used the exact same name. If he wants to be so righteous about it he can first either get permission or remove the game from the web.

    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)

    by nuxx ( 10153 ) on Saturday September 03, 2005 @03:12AM (#13469164) Homepage
    Recently I upgraded my personal photo gallery to a new version of software, eliminating the need for a publicly accessible directory full of images. Well, since my site has been around for a few years, I've collected a goodly number of people at sites like LiveJournal, Xanga, MySpace, and various other sites who have taken to linking some of my full res photos (2MB-5MB each) as the background for their sites.

    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].
    • Well, with the removal of the albums directory, I decided to redirect all requests for images in it to this annoyingly animated strobing GIF. This has the wonderful affect of making many, many crappy sites blink horribly. Like this and this.

      I believe proper 1337 }{aX0r etiquette is to change hotlinked images to goatse.

  • Waaay overboard (Score:4, Insightful)

    by flakac ( 307921 ) on Saturday September 03, 2005 @04:24AM (#13469351)
    This guy needs to chill out. Instead of reacting in a knee-jerk, vindictive fashion, he could have:
    1. Simply restricted access to the game for all requests with a referrer of fuddruckers.com by configuring the web server.
    2. Contacted the webmaster and politely discuss options for hosting and credit. Who knows if he could have even made some money and publicity out of the deal.
    3. Redirected requests coming from fuddruckers.com to a page explaining why he thinks hotlinking is wrong.
    Instead, he decides to show the world that he's an immature jerk, and in so doing reinforce public opinion of geeks as being primarily anti-social losers.

  • Tips (Score:3, Insightful)

    by t_allardyce ( 48447 ) on Saturday September 03, 2005 @05:04AM (#13469437) Journal
    For anyone in a similar situation, remember to follow the simple 6 steps:

    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)

    by entirety ( 909951 ) on Saturday September 03, 2005 @05:46AM (#13469498)
    Absolutely fascinating! I hope they did not point everything dere. host www.fuddruckers.com www.fuddruckers.com has address 66.102.7.99 whois -h whois.arin.net 66.102.7.99 OrgName: Google Inc. OrgID: GOGL Address: 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway City: Mountain View StateProv: CA PostalCode: 94043 Country: US

  • Now Fuddruckers has stolen Google!!! (Score:3, Informative)

    by amichalo ( 132545 ) on Saturday September 03, 2005 @08:31AM (#13469997)
    Check it out! [fuddruckers.com] Look's like Fuddruckers is now hotlinking all Google's content too!

    [let history show that the above link is redirecting all traffic to www.google.com in an attempt to live through the /.ing]

  • This is genius (Score:3)

    by spiritraveller ( 641174 ) on Saturday September 03, 2005 @08:34AM (#13470014)
    There are a few points of view being expressed here that I find to be utterly short-sighted.

    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)

    by psyon1 ( 572136 ) on Saturday September 03, 2005 @10:39AM (#13470601) Homepage
    Hyperlinking:
    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)

    by SnowDog74 ( 745848 ) on Saturday September 03, 2005 @10:56AM (#13470689)
    Fuddruckers has taken their site down and configured their DNS servers to redirect fuddruckers.com traffic to google. According to the developer's LiveJournal, they voluntarily took the site down and apologized to him.

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