Re: Posting clarification

Rick,
When posting pictures in the Bullitin Board context, I read somewhere that it is considered "theft of bandwidth" or poor form to express the img/img url in a way that links to a remote, non-picture hosting website ( a website that has a picture you want to post to a forum).

for example, : ["img"] picture hosting site ["/img"] is better than
["img"] some guy's commercial website picture.jpg ["img"]

I suppose it would tax the website function without the person actually registering a visit to that site. Any opinion on this issue? Do you care?

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The cure for a fallacious argument is a better argument, not the suppression of ideas.
-- Carl Sagan

It really depends on the site and picture you are linking to. You usually don't want to/shouldn't copy the image to some other site as that could result in legal problems. Linking isn't copying so is usually ok. If the site owner doesn't like people doing that, there are ways to prevent it.

Yes, it's always been considered poor internet etiquette to post someone else's photo embedded without permission.

On the other hand, a link to the photo or site is always OK. The reason for the difference is in that case, you get the copyright info, the photographer gets credit, and it's presented in a way that the photog or webmaster chose. example
http://www.pbase.com/roberthouse/image/45786503


Embedding that same photo would put the bare photo on someone else's page, with none of the information, just the photo itself, as though it's the property of that person. And, to top it off, it uses their server and bandwidth to serve up the photo every time someone looks at on 'your' page. If you want to do that, you should ask the photographer and offer to credit the photo to them, and/or add a link to the page where they have it shown.

On my pbase site, it tells me if there's a direct link somewhere to a photo. Some years ago I shut off direct linking, so for example if you tried to embed that above photo, it wouldn't work. Many providers also won't allow direct linking, and you get that red 'x'. I keep a couple of galleries with direct linking enabled, so I can put photos there and use them in forums like this. But you'd be surprised how many people will just, for example, make up a Yosemite page, and just direct-link to other peoples' photos to fill it up, with no credit or anything.

One might argue that they can just download your photo and use it, and that's right, but at least you're not stealing their bandwidth on top of their photo. And, by doing that, more people might think twice about whehter it's really OK to be posting that photo. In cases like that, there is recourse through the person's ISP or photo or website host, and they do take copyright violations pretty seriously

Some situations are different, like public domain photos the webcams etc., and generally they don't care; they're (webcams) just robotic photos anyway, so there's no real issue of stealing someone's hard-earned photo.

Personally, I figure if you post a photo on the web, you would be naive to think no one will use it for something. With my own photos, I don't care as long as it's not direct-linked without asking, or for any commercial use or profit. Someone wanting it for wallpaper, or a card or just a photo to look at, I don't care, and even if I did, there's not much one could do about it...that's the internet.

While we're on photos, one thing I'd like to mention is that most people have a monitor that might view only 1280 pixels wide, or maybe 1024, and part of that is used up by frames and menus; so there's no real point in posting a huge photo, except to make people scroll to see it. 800 or so pixels wide is a nice size that is large and viewable, and fits in most everyone's browser. It's really counter productive, most of the time, to post a photo that people have to scroll sideways to try to see (I usually just don't bother).

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Gary
Yosemite Photo Galleries: http://www.pbase.com/roberthouse/yo

Sierrafan wrote:

> Yes, it's always been considered poor internet etiquette to
> post someone else's photo embedded without permission.
>
To summarize in language that a non-HTML empowered mind (me) could understand:
For a graphic that you do not own, in order of preference:
1. provide URL link in < >
2. copy to your website with permission and/or credit and link to that to avoid bandwidth use on the original site
3. Ok to copy without attribution items that are in Public Domain to your photosharing page and link to those
4. probably OK to embed a photo from governmental site without specific permission or attribution??
5. least desirable, rudest, and possibly illegal action would be to embed a URL link to an intellectual property on a commercial website or other persons website because this will burden the website and not give credit to the owner

Did I get that right?

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The cure for a fallacious argument is a better argument, not the suppression of ideas.
-- Carl Sagan

Frank Furter wrote:

> 2. copy to your website with permission and/or credit and link
> to that to avoid bandwidth use on the original site

Copying without permission would be bad.

> 3. Ok to copy without attribution items that are in Public
> Domain to your photosharing page and link to those

Yep.

> 4. probably OK to embed a photo from governmental site without
> specific permission or attribution??

That should be fine.

> 5. least desirable, rudest, and possibly illegal action would
> be to embed a URL link to an intellectual property on a
> commercial website or other persons website because this will
> burden the website and not give credit to the owner

So far the court cases have consider such links to be legal, i.e. if the owner doesn't want them, he can take action to prevent such linking.

>>On my pbase site, it tells me if there's a direct link somewhere to a photo. Some years ago I shut off direct linking, so for example if you tried to embed that above photo, it wouldn't work. Many providers also won't allow direct linking, and you get that red 'x'. <<

One other thing, if it is commonly known that embedding can be blocked or enabled, doesn't that represent tacit permission for public use if something is posted in that fashion?

On an almost completely unrelated question, does Google get permission everytime it caches webpages?

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The cure for a fallacious argument is a better argument, not the suppression of ideas.
-- Carl Sagan

Sierrafan: so there's no real point in posting a huge photo

I have the dial-up connection, and a huge photo takes two weeks to download, jamming up the system as it lumbers along.

B

Bee wrote:

> I have the dial-up connection,

Wow! Those still exist?

I try to put interesting photos on my domain so I don't wipe out others' bandwidth. Plus most photos I post are my own anyway.

This next one I found in my email, however, no idea who it belongs to. See the thread "Anthropomorphism"

eeeek: Wow! Those still exist?

Umm, yeah. I try to remember not to admit it. Its like admitting that I watched the DVD's on computer, 'cause I had a VCR machine.

B

eeek wrote:

>Wow! Those still exist?

Yep. Everywhere rural. My dad is on dialup in remote San Diego County and he spent a small fortune for a satellite hookup that comes down through his DishTV. Still has to use dialup to request what page to look at. At least he doesn't have to wait a half hour for graphics-laden pages to load anymore. Now it's only 15 minutes LOL.

There has been quite a bit of fighting for many years over whether or not power companies could use transmission lines for internet. But pretty much everyone has a power line, I say why not?

If Obamer wants to get serious about everyone having internet, he should aggressively pursue this.

When in doubt, I'll use a Wikipedia photo. Those are generally the easiest to use and they're not likely to put up a stink about it.

Sierra Fan.
I was reading your post, great photos by the way, and was wondering about your turning off direct linking.

The photo you used for an example can be linked to via
http://i.pbase.com/v3/89/5489/1/45786503.P1030236.jpg

Does that gallery have the direct linking turned off?

Just curious how the pbase site works.
Thanks

Thanks for the photo comments. Direct linking should be off on that gallery, but there are a couple of things that make it hard to tell. Since I posted a link to that photo via the webpage, it would be cached in the user's temp files, and would likely show up on a direct link. But only on that machine that's already got the photo in the internet cache.

Here's one in a gallery that shouldn't be showing:


You can try copy/pasting that link
http://www.pbase.com/roberthouse/image/105835640.jpg
to see if it shows; it shouldn't, but the rainbow one you linked seems to work. Why, I have no idea, as linking is off for that gallery. Could be there's a glitch in pbase's direct linking that allows it (?)



Post Edited (04-05-09 22:31)

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Gary
Yosemite Photo Galleries: http://www.pbase.com/roberthouse/yo

Sierrafan wrote:

> Thanks for the photo comments. Direct linking should be off on
> that gallery, but there are a couple of things that make it
> hard to tell. Since I posted a link to that photo via the
> webpage, it would be cached in the user's temp files, and would
> likely show up on a direct link. But only on that machine
> that's already got the photo in the internet cache.
>
> Here's one in a gallery that shouldn't be showing:
>

For me it says "direct linking denied". If you've recently disabled direct linking, supposedly it can still remain in your cache and show up.

http://www.pbase.com/help/direct_linking&id=220

Quote

How can I disable/enable direct linking on my account?

You can enable or disable direct linking for your whole account at the update account page.

You can enable or disable direct linking for a specific gallery in the advanced view of the edit gallery page.

If you disable direct linking, images that have already been linked to will still show up for a little while before they are updated. All other images are blocked from direct linking immediately.