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Posted by Joel Shepherd on 11/19/04 11:34
In article <0mb273-l3v.ln1@ophelia.g5n.co.uk>,
Toby Inkster <usenet200512@tobyinkster.co.uk> wrote:
> Els wrote:
>
> > Or maybe a better analogy - shop sells beer with the promotion: buy 5,
> > get the 6th free. Do you plead 'not guilty' when they bust you for
> > only taking the 6th, because it is free?
>
> Better analogy: I'm giving out free hobnobs to anyone who visits me at
> home; you give people my address and say "free hobnobs here" and suddenly
> everyone's turning and taking my hobnobs. Are you stealing hobnobs from
> me?
The issue is not hobnobs or pictures. We're not talking about "picture
theft" and if we were there is already copyright law to address that
issue.
The issue is bandwidth, which many people who run websites pay for
monthly, for the specific purpose of serving content to visitors to
their site. When another person uses that bandwidth to serve content to
_their_ visitors, they are taking something of value from the original
site owner. The original owner has been deprived of bandwidth which they
are paying for to serve up their own site.
E.g., someone hotlinking to a large video file on my site can rapidly
consume bandwidth I'm paying for to serve both that file and hundreds of
smaller pages. If the abuse goes far enough, either my own visitors are
cut off from all content on my site, or I pay much higher fees for the
extra bandwidth to keep the site up. I am being deprived of something of
value which I've paid for. That sounds an awful lot like theft to me.
Drop the analogies for once. The issue is not that hard to understand.
--
Joel.
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