I think you're missing the point too that this could be considered a criminal act on the huns part and being that he lives in a country that is not "lawless" he might just get into trouble.

Another thing he's not considering...if he does this to any american companies and with the new anti-terrorist laws that have gone into place etc The Hun just might be picked up next time he walks through U.S. Customs at J.F.K. on his way to a convention.

No I don't think I am somehow. If the stereo thief continued to steal my goods every day and the police would refuse to stop him from doing so then yes I would. I you're gonna try an analogy it should at least be relevant

Not really. The legality of his actions is at best fuzzy. Either way I am not arguing that point. I am saying I would not let someone continue to screw me over on a daily basis if I had some action I could take back. If people who disagree with his actions would rather sit back and let it happen than take the 'vigilante' route then that's up to them. I'm not defending him as such other than saying there is no other action he can take about a Russian site. My stand is that I would do the same. Others obviously differ which is life. However, my point remains that he has no other way to stop them that anybody here has suggested.

They have courts in Russia???

Just curious:

1) Why can't they just change index.html to default.htm and the other site change the name of the graphic to something else and have the index page point to that? Sure they would have a lot of 404 requests to deal with - and thehun could change as well.

2) How much bandwidth would this really burn?

I don't see how anyone could say this is legal. Sure framing stuff and things like that have iffy legal situations, but when someone does something - that has no benefit to the user - or anyone else - it is obvious what he is doing. I have seen judges get pretty pissed off at this kind of behavior (revenge type stuff - not image sourcing :)

No law, no right, no privledge iis absolute. You can't get away with printing money by saying freedom of te press or things like that. I can't see ANY WAY this could be legal. if it was - you could do it to anyone you disliked. Companies could do it to their competitors.

Domain law disputes have allowed parties to substitute domain names as a party to the suit. I think it won't be long until we see stuff like this happening in situations like this.

I don't like cheaters either, but when you let individuals decide this sort of stuff - you erode any protection for those of us that are honest. Just because it is hard to fight, because they are in Russia - it doesn't make it much better.

What about the increased costs of bandwidth for those pages that are loading in the background for the innocent isps?

We're still waiting on your sugestions...


Also, like Tipsy pointed out, your example doesnt fit the bill... Plus he isnt breaking the porno.ru guys legs... he's just stopping copyright infrigement...

Dude quit arguing just to argue...LOL and actualy read what people post.

If you did you would see these words....

CONSIDERED and MIGHT

At the very least he's taking a chance...who cares if his Dutch lawyers tell him it's okay...if he does it to an American based company and they press charges how much do you want to bet Interpol will go and arrest his ass and turn him over to American Authorities...and if you think they won't do that...then think again...look at how many other european countries have worked with the FBI and Interpol in tracking down other hackers.

If this were being done to my website all I know is I would be on the phone with the FBI and let them handle it how they see fit...but then again I'm not a spammer or a cheater so no need to worry ;)

Now as far as the vigilante issue is concerned...we're not talking about anything really being stolen here other than a set of links.

Sure it's a copyright violation and an intellectual property rights violation but damn...do you honestly think the hun suffered from this?

I'm not saying he shouldn't protect what is his but there is no real cause to possibly put your own self into legal jeopardy here.

And for those who compare this to acting out revenge on a child molester...man you need to get your priorities straightened out.

That's really been my main argument - nobody who's crying about the legality of it has given any alternatives other than letting it happen every day. I've no interest in the rights or wrongs of the hun's actions really other than wanting to know what alternatives he had. I agree the Hun's actions are at best in a grey area and have stated that even so I'd probably do the same. Again that has not been my argument - rather what alternative was there other than to let it happen.

For the few who haven't understood it yet legal action is not an option at all.

BTW - please remember that this site had CP links on it too.

Oh, and to people arguing about the legality of this...


Its illegal... if it isnt, it should be...

...If thehun did it to me, we would sue his ass.


BUT


he wouldnt do it to me, because we wouldnt do illegal stuff to him!!

The russians did...

I would do the same...


IF it was someone in the USA or Western europe stealing from thehun, he would sue Im sure...
but he cant...
So he's dealing with them in the next best way...


again, I would do the same...

Why would the webmaster of a Hun knock off site in Russia bother to pursue legal action at all? He's probably 15 years old, and no one but us would give a shit.

Just imagining if this guy would be given a jury of his peers he'd probably have Sasush as his Jury Foreman....LOL

12Clicks for the prosecution.

:1orglaugh

Naw. Several people have said that they think it might be, or ought to be, in their little corner of the world...or something like that.

The one link provided in this thread was to a United States statute criminalizing various unauthorized access to or damage to United States government computers. It would probably take a year of litigation to determine whether hotlinking an image on a US govt computer "damaged" it within the meaning of the statute -- but I doubt porn.ru is on a US govt. server so who cares?

Nothing so far posted in this thread has linked to any evidence or credible argument that hotlinking of public images on a russian server by a dutch person using a server in the United States is illegal. Y'all are within yer rights to say it ought to be, but stop saying it IS until you know what you are talking about.

I did but Forkbeard has sort of covered it for me. It'd take a lot money paid to a lot of very expensive people to even come close to the answer of the legality. I'm not even gonna try. However I agree that it SHOULD be illegal. That still doesn't mean I wouldn't have done the same as the hun.

Just so. I'd estimate the job as taking about a person-month of professional time that's gonna run you somewhere between $150 and $300 an hour for the quality of work needed to have any faith in the answer.

Amen

only guys who whine about it being illegial are fucking SCAMMERS themselves. They deserves what they get.

EDIT: blah, not worth it. I forgot it was Sleazy, not a real person.

Cheers,
Backov

See you in court then. Not like I'm hiding.

so is it down already?

I'd classify it as a DDoS attack and I think the image can be protected from hot linking with .htaccess. :2 cents: :winkwink:

If you read the full thread (got a spare hour) you'll see why it can't be. Still, there are other ways if the site being hit has any sense which probably they don't.

Just to clarify that point ;)

yeah, i see what you mean. htaccess will not work.:1orglaugh
i don't see how this can be blocked?! but wait... here's another idea:
the index.html can check the referrer and so block all request from thehun... no need to blocking packets since they are mostly unique and valid(no syn flooding) connections with port 80 and blocking port 80 would obviously take them offline. :thumbsup

No matter what you do, that server is being killed. It's either pumping out a couple of million copies of that page, or it's processing so many requests and rejecting them, that it can't do anything else.

Either way, that server is screwed.

he should have changed the picture file to a auto bookmarking script. that would have taught him a lesson

yeah :( they are screwed either way ... next best thing for them would be to utilize the hits... SIGN UP FOR A SPONSOR that pays $1 per thousand hits. They'll be swimming in the cash :thumbsup

You seem to forget who is teaching who a lesson here.

Whether you like what's happening or not, there is one indisputable fact that all the finger pointing cannot erase.

This is all the cheater's fault. If he hadn't stolen from The Hun, this wouldn't be happening at all. Rationalize it, excuse it, defend it, do whatever you want. If he hadn't done what he did, this would not be happening.

There's no .htaccess needed to solve this. All they need to do is simply stop their illegal activities against me. Sure, I can afford a lawyer to fight these people. And with enough loopholes I could even get a Russian lawyer to deal with the guy from Russia, but do I want to waste my time and thousands of dollars to fight people that are spamming me or stealing my content?

TrafficMagnet sucks. I tried calling 'em, e-mailing 'em, faxing 'em. I was on the phone with their host, they couldn't do anything. Still I continue to get their spam e-mails over and over. No way to get off the list. And spidering sites like mine for e-mail addresses of other webmasters. Do I spend thousands of dollars on a lawyer to get these guys to stop? No... do they continue to spam people, totally ignoring any requests from others? Yes (check the searchengines for trafficmagnet). Do I get pissed? No, but I did get their attention. Two e-mails from them so far to ask me to stop. I told 'em it could be easily stopped. Just give me a phonenumber that works. I'd love to discuss this with 'em. In the mean time I got another spam e-mail... go figure

As for the Russian guy stealing links. He didn't react to my e-mails, his host didn't react to my e-mails (I suspect it's the same guy, so he's on dedicated hosting). Obviously I made sure there was no free host involved on this. Don't want to let innocent bystanders take a blow over this as well.

What we're looking at here is not a simple legal issue. By definitions of a DOS attack I'm not DOS attacking. By definition of hacking I'm definately not hacking. But by definitions of spam I think trafficmagnet is not spamming either. They have an opt-out link which is required. Nowere does it state that opt-out link should actually work. So theirs doesn't. Stealing links is an easy one, that is illegal, and that was proven in court in 1999 when I sued someone over this.

These two companies can solve this matter very easily. The Russian guy should take down the links he copied from me. I'll be willing to even mail him a sincere apology for the drastic measures I took against them. Trafficmagnet can solve their issue by stopping the spam they send out to people. And by stopping to harvest my site for e-mail addresses.

Some may not agree with me on this, but the way I see the Internet right now is half lawless... It's like the wild west where the sherrif takes care of the legal works, but people have to come up for themselves as well 'cause the law simply doesn't provide the protection it should. I didn't do this overnight. And I did give this a lot of thought. I might take both links off my site soon to see what happens. If these two companies continue their ways I will put 'em back though. I told both companies what I would do up front. TrafficMagnet was added as soon as I received another spam e-mail from them, the Russian guy was added 'cause he didn't reply to any of my e-mails for over a week but kept updating his page with stolen links.

Bow to the power of the Hun

hehe

Remind me never to fuck with you. heh. I'm all in favor of a little street justice, keep up the good work.

Give them spam mofo's what they deserve.
I hate them SOB's

Well said, Patrick :)

eros this is the words of someone who does not know the law!
:1orglaugh

they would never ever hand over the hun to the feds.... man you see way to many movies!

If I recall holland does not have a contact about handing over suspects or even crimminals.... just like denmark doesn't!

also It would first have to be proven in dutch court that he in fact did do somethink..... and before even handing over a dutch person his crime would have to be alot bigger!

fuckk you cheater!

Vegas

lol :D
that's awesome

You calling me a cheater?

do you prefer to be called slut???

I do recall a first use of the bol brick....

if it was not you im sorry... then u can call me a slut instead!

The file that's linked on trafficmagnet has been changed since I last checked yesterday, it 0 kilobytes

http://www.trafficmagnet.net/images/tm_logo.psd
is 150 kilobytes though :winkwink:

hell call me a slut anyway!

:thumbsup

I think some of you whiners need to take your enemas and shut the fuck up...

Be glad the Hun owns thehun because if i did im pretty fucking sure i would not be a responsible with the site as he is...

Fucking Pussies...