Subject:
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Re: Cracking down on unauthorized image links
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.admin.general
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Date:
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Sat, 5 Jun 1999 01:30:42 GMT
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Viewed:
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941 times
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In lugnet.admin.general, david_nospam@sork.com (D Sorkin) writes:
> > So in fact (unfortunately) it is not even possible to scale the image to an
> > appropriate viewing size at the server end, even if bandwidth and CPU
> > weren't an issue. But if an image is simple enough, the client can do its
> > crude job of scaling it, and it'll still be readable enough.
>
> Well, couldn't you have several JPEGs of various dimensions ready to go,
> along with a database of the dimensions of the original images, and then
> feed the one whose dimensions are closest to those of the requested image?
Ah. Yes. I see. Given the filename of image that the client wanted (which
could be extracted from the URL), the actual dimensions of the image could
be looked up (quite easily, in fact). So, yes, I misspoke. In general,
it's not possible for the server to know what size an image is supposed to
be, but in this case, it could take advantage of specially known
information. Neat idea.
And rather than up-sampling the image (if the destination image is larger),
it could [theoretically] be padded with whitespace (or blackspace). That
would keep the image more readable and smaller in byte-size, too.
Yet's it's still more work than is worth doing. But maybe someday...who
knows.
> Actually, it probably doesn't matter that much -- my guess is that most
> image-link pirates aren't going to bother coding the HEIGHT and WIDTH
> anyway, since they'll just let eBay plop in the image link that they
> enter on the listing form rather than coding the link themselves. Thus
> the alternate images will usually appear with whatever dimensions you
> give them, regardless of the dimensions of the original images that
> they're replacing.
Yeah, that's what seems to be happening on eBay.
> > I took David's suggestion of displaying a placeholder image in lieu of a
> > broken image link. But I made it a simple static image, 200x200 pixels.
> > The image depicts a sad face and gives a URL to go to for more information:
> >
> > http://www.lugnet.com/oops.gif
> > http://www.lugnet.com/oops.html
>
> Looks great, though I still think you could do more to capitalize
> on the situation. (I probably overstated the value of this for
> banner-style advertising, since you can't really turn the image
> into a live hyperlink -- though I think you could attach a cookie
> to it if you were so inclined.
Hmm, interesting possibility -- hadn't thought of that. But I think that
putting cookies on people's machines when they haven't explicitly requested
that a cookie be stored is devil's work. (But that's just my opinion.)
> How often do you get the chance
> to put an ad on someone else's web page, where only you have the
> ability to change its content? Why not offer the space up to
> competing eBay sellers, or Amazon.com or Yahoo! Auctions, or at
> least AucZILLA?)
An enterprising idea, to be sure, but would that actually work to discourage
bad links?
Above all, I want to do whatever is reasonably possible to stamp out these
bad links. Stamping them out completely is -- I believe -- technically
impossible. But they can certainly be reduced.
Putting a banner ad in -- instead of something like a confusing frowny/sad
face -- just causes the images to be ignored that much more by people. And
the only way to make the image clickable is if the original HTML page
surrounds the <IMG> tag with an <A> tag, -and- if a cookie is stored.
My desire (long term) is to slowly educate people who use the system either
directly or indirectly. Once someone has seen the sad yellow face and has
read the information on page it refers to, they never again need to pay
close attention to that image if/when they see it -- they'll just know that
the creator of the page they're viewing is doing something wrong, and each
such viewing will reinforce in their mind that linking directly to images on
other peoples' servers is a bad thing.
> > (Note: these URLs probably won't work after about a week, or may already
> > have been fixed by the time you view them.)
>
> I don't think that it's possible for sellers to delete text or links
> from a listing; I believe that all they can do is add to it. Also,
> I think that those links should work for 30 days after the end of each
> auction.
Ahh. Heh heh. Well, this should truly be interesting then. :)
--Todd
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Cracking down on unauthorized image links
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| Hi Todd I saw today your oops gif on ebay and thought its a good step. you might consider adding to the gif under the sad face: unauthorized direct links to lugnet images is prohibited use of our bandwidth please connect using(insert your url here) (...) (25 years ago, 6-Jun-99, to lugnet.admin.general)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: Cracking down on unauthorized image links
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| (...) Well, couldn't you have several JPEGs of various dimensions ready to go, along with a database of the dimensions of the original images, and then feed the one whose dimensions are closest to those of the requested image? Actually, it probably (...) (25 years ago, 4-Jun-99, to lugnet.admin.general)
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