Stealing bandwidth, and internet morality ...

[TomJoe]

Oy vey. Let me see if I can come up with an analogy that describes what I mean.

Say I have an electrical outlet that sits in my front yard, very close to the curb. It's just an outlet, so anyone could come up to it and plug anything they want into it. Now, if someone does plug something into it, they use electricity which I now have to pay for. They didn't ask me if they can use the outlet, and since it's not locked up, they just assumed I don't care if anyone uses it. However, I do mind, I use it to run my electric mower for my front yard, and it didn't dawn on me to cover/lock it up until I found a huge spike in my electricity bill, but by then ... it was too late. I've already been saddled with an expensive bill for at least one month ... and maybe some months went by where I didn't notice the increase in my bill because it wasn't very huge, but added up over the months it's still a sizeable cost.

Now, if someone had asked me if they could plug it in, I might've said yes ... depending on who it was, and what they wanted it for. If they wanted to plug it in to light up their entire house, I would say no ... but if they just needed it for some light mowing of their own yard ... I might not have a problem with it.

The point is ... irregardless of whether or not I block access to that electrical plug or not, it's still my property, it's still something I pay for out of my own pocket and I haven't given any people permission to use it, they've just assumed they could because I didn't lock it up.

Does that make any more sense than what I've already said?

[Corona688]

Originally Posted by TomJoe

Oy vey. Let me see if I can come up with an analogy that describes what I mean.

Say I have an electrical outlet that sits in my front yard, very close to the curb. It's just an outlet, so anyone could come up to it and plug anything they want into it. Now, if someone does plug something into it, they use electricity which I now have to pay for. They didn't ask me if they can use the outlet, and since it's not locked up, they just assumed I don't care if anyone uses it.

Once again your analogy betrays a vast misunderstanding of the way the internet is. Your analogy fails right here because people don't put content on the internet for the purpose of people not viewing it. That outlet is not on your "front lawn", it's flat out in the middle of the public square with "PUBLIC OUTLET" written on it. If you don't want people using that outlet, put it somewhere else.

[LadyShea]

Another easy source end solution is to stamp all images with a name or url.

Though, I agree livius, that it seems fair to just post a credit with the image.

TomJoe, a better analogy would be broadcast TV. The broadcasters are putting the information out there for free, anyone with a TV and antennae can view the images they are sending...no need to ask permission to. If they didn't want people to be able to view it, they would make themselves a pay channel instead.

[Dingfod]

Many sites belonging to professional photographers and the like do exactly that, place a watermark across the image that would ruin it for anyone wanting to make any other use for it than linking to the original site.

I suppose crediting the image would be the polite thing to do, just like quotes.

[viscousmemories]

Originally Posted by squian

So, bandwidth-right seems to be the idea that, as a site admin, I should have some moral or netiquette right to control how that bandwidth is used, without any obligation to implement technology that will enforce my expectations. So if I have understood TomJoe's point, then not asking to use the bandwidth is similar to not asking an author if you can copy some of his work.

I think this is an accurate characterization of what TomJoe is saying, and I agree that it's not entirely without merit. But it's definitely a matter of degree. If I were to start a clip-art gallery website that drew thousands of visitors each day and hotlinked hundreds of images from a single site, I would have an ethical problem with that. What we're talking about here isn't people plugging into an outside outlet, though. It's people picking up a penny from the sidewalk in front of your house. Sure, you could knock on the door and ask if it's okay for you to keep the penny, but is it immoral of you not to? I don't think so.

As something of an aside, here's a blog entry I stumbled on where a guy is bitching about Matt Drudge stealing various people's bandwidth by hotlinking, and despite his best efforts he couldn't seem to get the NY Times, Amazon, or Yahoo! concerned about it. As he said, it almost seems as if these companies have no problem with people hotlinking to their images...

[Gurdur]

Originally Posted by viscousmemories

,......and despite his best efforts he couldn't seem to get the NY Times, Amazon, or Yahoo! concerned about it. As he said, it almost seems as if these companies have no problem with people hotlinking to their images...

Tcha, tcha, tcha, heh heh.

[squian]

TomJoe, the analogy seems apt enough to illustrate the problem. However, consider a similar example. I go traveling a lot. When I'm in an airport, I see many, many people plugging into the airport outlets to recharge various devices between flights. I'm one of them sometimes. Now, I'm sure someone has to pay for that power. And yet in 2 years of weekly travel, I have never seen a single indication that anyone actually minds. It seems very similar to vm's example of NY Times, Amazon, and Yahoo not caring. As first pointed out by Legs, the cost of most people's bandwidth is extremely low and there are simple mechanisms to prevent hotlinks if an admin desires to do so. When people mind, it's typically about owning the content as IP rather than about preventing "unauthorized use of bandwidth".

So clearly, I have not made a strong argument that bandwidth stealing does not exist or that it's not immoral. I have only stretched the analogy to point out that there are no reasonable expectations about it and that, as far as netiquette is concerned, it's not clear how to handle the situation. I think it's more similar to other, less trivial examples than people would like to admit. Consider other types of bandwidth stealing, such as plugging into the neighbor's wireless. Is that unethical? The whole issue of spam emails is that it's so hard to be precise about what spam is. And yet one of the biggest problems with spam is that it's seen as a clear waste of bandwidth.

This is an essential problem with the notion of bandwidth stealing. One can provide analogies all day long to illustrate the principle but that does little to help define it precisely. If you wanted to have a law against bandwidth stealing, have we defined it well enough here to enforce such a law?

[rigorist]

Tom, try thinking of this . . . .

Right now I am looking at a 160 gigabyte drive sitting on my desk. It is chock full of my information. It's not hooked up to the net at all. It's my storage and backup drive and is solely for personal use.

If I hooked it up to the net without any access controls, I would be implicitly saying to the world, "Come and look at my stuff!" I would be paying bandwidth charges precisely because I wanted to world to come and look at my stuff. Bandwidth charges are the price people pay because they want to share their stuff.

I guess I don't see the ethical dilemna of accepting people's free offers. If people don't want to share images, they can either limit access through the software or not put up the stuff at all. Their bandwidth is not being "stolen"--the bandwidth for which the original posters of information on the net have paid is being used precisely as they intended; namely as a means of sharing their information.

The social contract we have developed over the past decade in this area is pretty clear and pretty fair.

[rigorist]

Oh, and I use my Tivo to fast-forward through commercials, too. And I block pop-ups.

And I have no guilt!

(props to Patti Smith)

[Godless Dave]

Originally Posted by TomJoe

Or better yet, download the picture to your desktop, then upload it to FF?

Because that could be stealing - making a copy of the image and distributing it without permission.

As I understand it, it is easy to disable remote linking in Apache. So if you don't want anyone linking to your images, just disable remote linking. If you haven't disabled remote linking then I am perfectly justified in assuming that you don't mind if I link to them.

It isn't stealing.

But in case anyone was wondering, you all have permission to link to any of the images I host at http://www.tc.umn.edu/~teeg0011/images/ . And also http://www.truthspeaker.org/img/ except I can't figure out how to turn directory scan on so that doesn't do you much good as you have no way of knowing what's there.

[justaman]

Originally Posted by TomJoe

Say I have an electrical outlet that sits in my front yard, very close to the curb. It's just an outlet, so anyone could come up to it and plug anything they want into it. Now, if someone does plug something into it, they use electricity which I now have to pay for. They didn't ask me if they can use the outlet, and since it's not locked up, they just assumed I don't care if anyone uses it. However, I do mind, I use it to run my electric mower for my front yard, and it didn't dawn on me to cover/lock it up until I found a huge spike in my electricity bill, but by then ... it was too late. I've already been saddled with an expensive bill for at least one month ... and maybe some months went by where I didn't notice the increase in my bill because it wasn't very huge, but added up over the months it's still a sizeable cost.

Why did you install an outlet in your front yard if you didn't want people to use it? Why not just buy an extension lead so no one else could?

I think this analogy pretty much sums up the error of your position

[JoeP]

Originally Posted by JoeP

Part of this has been said, but hey.

The issue of hotlinking is an issue, but asserting it as illegal is a crazy solution. The issue is that some sites - with really great images for avatars and smilies and home-pages (do we still have those?) - got hotlinked thousands of times by frequently-viewed pages. That's a huge burden on their bandwidth, especially when bandwidth was a bigger cost than it is now (I'm talking about other countries than my own of course ). But just because it's undesirable for them doesn't mean a legal remedy is possible.

This doesn't affect the average site. The solution - blocking hotlinking in your server settings - is effective and appropriate, and a minor marginal cost for sites that are affected.

joe

Hmm. Seems like I was completely right and no one noticed or argued at all.

[TomJoe]

Originally Posted by justaman

Why did you install an outlet in your front yard if you didn't want people to use it? Why not just buy an extension lead so no one else could?

I think this analogy pretty much sums up the error of your position

Well, other people may have me convinced ... but I don't buy this argument at all. I can put an outlet anywhere on my property, it's my property ... right?

I don't think it reasonable to think that if I put an outlet on my property, even if it were near the curb, that just because someone else could use it ... they have a right to use it.

[seebs]

Originally Posted by TomJoe

I would think that hotlinking to an AP photo here, is a redistribution, no?

Nope. Do I send those bits to anyone? No. Does their server send the bits? Yes.

[Dragar]

Well, other people may have me convinced ... but I don't buy this argument at all. I can put an outlet anywhere on my property, it's my property ... right?

The response to that will be that by putting it online without blocking hotlinking, you've hung a sign on it saying 'for public use!'. If you want to take the sign down, turn off hotlinking.

[TomJoe]

Originally Posted by Dragar

The response to that will be that by putting it online without blocking hotlinking, you've hung a sign on it saying 'for public use!'. If you want to take the sign down, turn off hotlinking.

Fair enough. I guess I'm looking at this from the opposite perspective from everyone else. To me, if the sign isn't there, I'm assuming it's not for public use. To everyone else, it's saying the opposite.

[Dragar]

Fair enough. I guess I'm looking at this from the opposite perspective from everyone else. To me, if the sign isn't there, I'm assuming it's not for public use. To everyone else, it's saying the opposite.

Welcome to the internet, where men are men, women are men, and children are FBI agents.

Oh, and where there are different conventions in place.

[rigorist]

Originally Posted by TomJoe

Fair enough. I guess I'm looking at this from the opposite perspective from everyone else. To me, if the sign isn't there, I'm assuming it's not for public use. To everyone else, it's saying the opposite.

Precisely. And the ethic we have socially constructed is that images hosted on the internet without security are fair game.

[Dragar]

Precisely. And the ethic we have socially constructed is that images hosted on the internet without security are fair game.

I think it's worth adding that sometimes people do object to hot linking, and it's considered polite to ask before hand, or at the very least link to your source.

But yes; the general rule of thumb is that people won't mind.

[Corona688]

Originally Posted by TomJoe

Well, other people may have me convinced ... but I don't buy this argument at all. I can put an outlet anywhere on my property, it's my property ... right? I don't think it reasonable to think that if I put an outlet on my property, even if it were near the curb, that just because someone else could use it ... they have a right to use it.

Indeed it would be, if this were your power outlet on your lawn as opposed to a webserver on the internet. The two are apples and oranges, not because I say it is, but because they do vastly different things and behave in vastly different ways.

Your entire argument, as far as I can tell, consists of repeated rephrasing of your opinion in ways that don't even look all that different. A decent summary of this conversation would be

"OK, here's the way it is."
"Bullshit, that's not how it is."
"Let's try that again. OK, here's the say it is."
"Bullshit, that's not how it is."

...repeated ad infinitum. No amount of rephrasing what you believe is going to make it sound convincing because you're working from the assumption that a web server is a dumb, passive source of private resources that sits there subject to the abuse of random passers by.

A web server is not an outlet. It's an information robot that obeys simple commands. When people download hotlinked images from your web server they're not sneaking up to your outlet and stealing electricity, they're asking your robot whether they can plug in. After which, your robot says "fine by me" and plugs it in for them. If you tell your robot to stop doing that, it'll stop doing that, but people have no reason to assume that a service your robot is cheerfully granting is something it shouldn't be doing.

It's also silly to think a web server is private. The whole idea of the internet is a generic public communications medium, on top of which can be built services both public and private. An outlet on your lawn is extremely likely to be there for your use and not the public's at large, and has many uses other than having random passers-by plug into it. But a web server on the internet has one purpose: To explicitly allow people to access content in a convenient and global way. That's what it's there for.

Web traffic is also not "abuse". You obviously don't want random passers by using your front lawn outlet. You do want people seeing your content -- that's what it's there for. If you want your content to be only seen in a specific context or accessed a specific way, or even restrict it to specific people or whatever, you're allowed to do so, but the default is public -- that's the nature of the interent.

[viscousmemories]

Originally Posted by Corona688

A web server is not an outlet. It's an information robot that obeys simple commands. When people download hotlinked images from your web server they're not sneaking up to your outlet and stealing electricity, they're asking your robot whether they can plug in. After which, your robot says "fine by me" and plugs it in for them. If you tell your robot to stop doing that, it'll stop doing that, but people have no reason to assume that a service your robot is cheerfully granting is something it shouldn't be doing.

I think that's an excellent point, Corona.

[Ensign Steve]

• teehee!
• What good would it do to "report" all the people who are hotlinking images? The web server has all that information in the registry anyway, to do with as we please. We don't have to wait for that month's bill. (Should I send myself a cease and desist letter, anyway?)
• We can't hotlink to images in the FF gallery anymore, unfortunately. (actually we can - dorian can still see the pics just fine)
• Anyone can feel free to hotlink to the pictures on my site, with credit or without (although I can't imagine why anyone would).

[livius drusus]

Originally Posted by Ensign Steve

dorian can still see the pics just fine

Tell him to clear his cache and try again. Betcha he can't.

[Ensign Steve]

He had never seen the pic before. (unless you're talking about something you did in the last five minutes)

[Gurdur]

Originally Posted by Ensign Steve

• ....Anyone can feel free to hotlink to the pictures on my site,..

I would, but they distract me.