Referrer blocking images

[ciphergoth]

I'm finding that quite a few people are linking directly to images on http://www.ciphergoth.org/ and none of them have asked first. I'm tempted to institute referrer blocking, so that if an image is embedded in a page not my own, an alternate image is displayed: probably one containing a URL which links to a page explaining what I've done and why.

What do people think? Is referrer blocking a Bad Thing? Is there a better way to do it? I'd be happy to make exceptions for pretty much anyone who asks, but I don't like the way people don't ask first.

Update: I'll probably use the instructions from the LiveJournal FAQ instead of that module...

Comments

[wechsler.livejournal.com]

If they don't ask, you're under no obligation to give - I assume the module doesn't block image request with no referer though, as a lot of browsers no lomger send this field.

I should probably check my own sites for this...

[wechsler.livejournal.com]

Note to self: rtfm first, post later ;)

[cairmen.livejournal.com]

Do these people not have a) email or b) a "save image as" function? Block 'em.

Go for it

[ukfetish.livejournal.com]

I would never direct-link to an image on someone else's server without asking permission - I think doing so is quite commonly known to be a fairly rude thing to do.

Directing people to an explanation is a good idea - if I happened to run across a page that contained such an image/url/explanation trail I would then follow it through to contacting the site admin and asking why they'd direct-linked you without asking...

Regards,
Denny

[skx.livejournal.com]

 I remember being a victim of this recently. I posted a link to an image in my journal, and people viewing it were subjected to a picture of a man's cock. Personally I think that if somethings available online it's fair use to link to it; that covers images, deep linking, and all kinds of things that are related.

 For example including somebody elses text in my Online TV Guide or the way you linked to Fayes image here - are both examples of things that are OK, and exactly what the web was invented for.

 However I guess it depends upon the scale. If it were just one or two people I'd be fine with it - if it were lots of people then I might change my mind.

 Perhaps mailing the individuals you spot linking might be a better place to start..?

[ex-meta.livejournal.com]

If something's online, yeah, it's fair to link to it. But equally, what ciphergoth puts on his web server, and what he names the files, is his business.

If I were him, I'd replace the images with something maximally embarrassing. I'd look on it as someone handing me a pranking opportunity on a plate.

[akicif.livejournal.com]

There are two problems with this, though. The first is that if someone has an image on a server where their bandwidth is seriously rationed, they can end up incurring various penalties (possibly even financial ones) if someone is linking directly to an image on their site.

The second is more of a legal issue: did you see the Shetland Times case?

[skx.livejournal.com]

 Yes I did read about The Shetland Case, but that's about a different thing as far as I understand the case.

 The Shetland case involved one site linking to another site linking to news headlines of another site; with its visitors being unaware they were viewing content from another site. Whilst on the face of it this is identical to the linking of images which ciphergoth is talking about it's different in terms of scale - and intent.

 I guess it's up to people to make up their own minds, but for me as long as my outgoing bandwidth isn't being massively affected I think it's all for the greater good.

[adjectivemarcus.livejournal.com]

*reads Shetland case with great interest*

Thank you for linking to this, I'm having some problems with people framing my content currently...

Hmmm.

[akicif.livejournal.com]

I guess it's like interpreting RFCs - be generous in what you offer, be careful in what you take...

I have to admit I've a slight reason for bias - I lent a colleague at playstation.com some space on my server to stick a couple of images on so that he could show them to someone off site, but he then included the images (still on my server) on the playstation site itself. I was quite surprised (initially) to see the massive increase in the number of hits on my site, plus people poking around looking for other stuff, and even a couple of phone calls... It had the potential to get very messy, very quickly.

[nickys.livejournal.com]

I suppose it depends what the images are.
If they're pictures of recognisable people then permission should be asked before using them somewhere else.

I wouldn't have a problem with someone using images from my site without asking so long as they made it clear on their site where they'd got the images from.
It would be nice to be asked, but I do think that if you put stuff up on the Internet it's pretty inevitable that other people will make use of it.

confused...

[baratron.livejournal.com]

If you posted in your LJ that you had cool photos from an event I'd been at, and I went to your site to discover you had a cool photo of me there, I wouldn't expect to have to email you to ask permission to link to it from my LJ. I'd post something like "Cool photo of me here [linked] courtesy of ciphergoth". Are you saying you find it rude for people to do this? Or talking about something entirely different?

If you're saying that you'd find it rude for me to tell my friends that you had a cool photo of me, and instead expect me to download the picture and put it on my own web site, I'd find that really odd. Especially as all (or the majority) of pictures on my own site are copyright me, whereas a picture taken by you is copyright you. I don't really understand how we can have such different ideas on this.

(Apologies for completely overusing the phrase "cool photo" there, but I thought it was easier to stick to one expression than keep changing it.)

Re: confused...

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

I'm not talking about

"hey, there's a cool photo of me on the ciphergoth website:

http://www.ciphergoth.org/photos/whitby/2002.11/coolphoto.html

check it out!"

which is of course fine. I'm talking about

Isn't this a lovely photo of me?

<img src="http://www.ciphergoth.org/photos/whitby/2002.11/coolphoto.jpg>

where the image is embedded directly in the journal. That won't work any more. Does that make sense?

still confused...

[baratron.livejournal.com]

Huh - livejournal still marks up my < and > even with "don't auto-format" ticked!

I'm still confused, sorry. I'm pretty sure you don't actually have any photos of me anyway, but I'm trying to understand this in principle because if you feel this way, I'm sure that other webmasters do too. The problem is that there are several differences between your first and second example, so I'm still not clear what you're actually objecting to...

Is the difference simply whether or not the image is embedded in the page? i.e. whether I (or whoever) uses <a href="imagename.jpg"> or <img src="imagename.jpg"> to link to the picture? Or is it more than that? meta said "what he names the files, is his business"... do you mean you don't want people linking to the individual pictures, only to the page that they are on? What if you haven't set up a page for each individual image - just an index page? Or do you always make a page for each image? And is it just a case of credit - if an image is embedded, viewers would have to go to the source to find out whose site it was actually on, whereas if a link is given, even a stupid person could see that it was on your site?

It's just that I don't see any difference between someone embedding pictures from my site in their journals (or wherever), with text saying "courtesy of baratron" (or equivalent for a site off LJ), and your first example above. So I'm trying to understand your distinction.

Re: still confused...

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Is the difference simply whether or not the image is embedded in the page?

It's embedding in the page without asking first I want to prevent, yes. I'd rather people were directed to ciphergoth.org so they can see the images in context. Credit is part of that.

In the "photos" section, I always make a page for each image.

In practice I'd be prepared to be very flexible for anyone who actually asks.