img src - hmmm
 

it's mentioned all the time - but never really discussed, especially from a legal standpoint. hotlinking happens all the time. hotlinking to the point of taking out a server(s) happens less frequently.

apparently the hun has done it. i know others have done it.

things are slow here tonight ;)

Does anyone know of a legal case where someone sued for hotlinking? Not copyright theft, but bandwidth theft.

It would be classified a Denial of Service attack if you bought there service down.

I think that can mean criminal charges in the US these days.


Jayson

of course it could be looked at that way. but has anyone ever been convicted of it, by simply hotlinking the shit out of a site?

mr.fiction, yes i am talking about hotlinking, not copyright violation - which i am VERY experienced with :)

and you bring up an interesting point - bandwidth theft. i deal with that on a daily basis, but i always use copyright violation to have the sites shut down...

thieves.

:BangBang:

:winkwink:

*bumb*

quiet - go, try and post the results here ;)

Its all good fun... until they reverse the attack. :1orglaugh

if your talking pure logistics, this is not the type of img src i'm talking about. what i'm envisioning is someone with millions of daily unique visitors, going after someone with under 100,000. reversing won't do much to a site that is already capable of handling a truly monstrous amount of traffic. and bandwidth.

legalities are something else.

Does the referrer URL get sent?

i'm trying to keep this kind of general :) just basic discussion is all :)

Give me $10,000. I'll let ya img src me til my server melts. ;)

reversing the attack isn't the only option... it is also possible to deny via htaccess, and send the 403 traffic to another site. for example, elephant list was img src'ing a while back, the 'victim' redirected the attack to gfy, and brought it down.

they don't have to reverse the attack to where it came from... it can be sent to fbi.gov and the attacker's url will show as a referrer, the 'victim' url won't. that could be nasty. ;-)

it doesn't really matter if a site can handle 300% of the traffic they are getting now... they can reverse to a movie file that may be 1 or 2 megs in size, although the setup could handle it with ease, it will $ cost the img src'er. :-)

if it's closely monitored, that would never happen. however, i'm not interested in technical aspects. i am interested in legalities, and general opinions.

actually, the reason i started this thread is because i'm beginning to consider the bandwidth theft angle as a new way to go after and kill sites (in addition to my staple: copyright violation). but let the thread go where it may :)

I think legally, you have to worry about img srcing someone on a shared server. You start crashing dozens of other peoples' sites, and I think they may have some sort of real case against you.

Just one thing I thought of.

Not speaking legalistically (though I'm pretty sure there could be legal consequences if the damage was enough), but ethically, it is theft pure and simple. Like tapping into someone else's electric line and making them pay for your usage.