oh the irony of it all

[rone]

So, Something Awful gets all pissy when people link directly to one of their images, thus leeching their bandwidth, so they'll sometimes replace it with a picture of a she-male or something similarly unpalatable to punish the leecher. And yet, in one of their own banner ads, they actually rip off our dearest sambushell (it's in the fourth frame of the animation).

Something Awful

jsam
(source page)

Sam, maybe you oughta send them a bill.

Comments

[sambushell.livejournal.com]

Hmm. First, would someone please explain what that banner ad's text means?

[vspope.livejournal.com]

The acronyms are short forms of the names of some of the SomethingAwful forms (The Crackhead Clubhouse, Serious Hardware/Software Crap, Sports Argument Stadium, Anime Death Tentacle Rape Warehouse).

[schwa242.livejournal.com]

Yes, but did they link directly to the image?

-- Schwa ---

[mskala.livejournal.com]

Images on my Web site often turn up in postings on Web BBSes and journals and similar. The images from my recent comments on the Photoshop money block (http://www.livejournal.com/users/mskala/7727.html) did that a lot. I have strong views that in general, people should be allowed to make links to stuff without needing permission - but I find it quite annoying when the images I post are being embedded in pages that I can't read because they're on some private satellite-pirate BBS or in someone's friends-only Livejournal. It seems to me that if you want to share my content, you should share your content with me too.

So I've taken to redirecting links I consider abusive to the lead image from tubcat.com (http://www.tubcat.com/) (suitable for work, unless you're a professional Web designer), and I'm quite pleased with the results. When people see it where they expected one of my images, they immediately recognize that I have caught them stealing bandwidth, and it usually spawns a sub-thread of people expressing amusement on the BBS page where the deep-linked image had been posted (in those cases where I can read the BBS page). But they don't get angry, attempt to retaliate, or try to defeat the redirect, which is what I think they'd do if I used a directly hostile image like tubgirl or the late-lamented goatse. The bandwidth thieves recognize it as a fair cop, are amused by the funny picture, and then go away.

To be fair

[palecur.livejournal.com]

banner ads are not done by 'official' SA staff. Any yip-yop with 8.95 can buy a banner ad for the month. And trawling google image search is the usual way to find source images. So, it wasn't exactly like SA high panjandrums are rubbing their tiny hands together, cackling with glee at yet another brilliant image theft from the guarded vaults at JSamCo.

It is an awfully cute pic though.