So Joe…

I have a site called ITsVISTA which explores all aspects of Microsoft’s Windows Vista. I noticed in Google’s Blog search an article that seemed very familiar. After visiting the site, I came to realize that not only had I written the article, the images were also being pulled from my site (hotlinking). Looking further at the site, I found many of my posts had been copied there. My posts are covered by a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License. This means they must give me credit (they didn’t) and they can’t make money off it (ads all over the site). So what’s a guy to do? Their’s no contact information on the site, so I can’t use my preferred method of simply asking them to comply or remove the content. Well, I found this great site, HTML Basix that has a form that will generate for you a .htaccess file. With this file, you can allow some sites, while blocking others from hotlinking to your images. Not only that, you can redirect any image requests to an image of your choice. BINGO! Visit the [site name removed since he disabled the graphics], and if they haven’t yet realized what’s going on, you’ll see I’ve messed up the site pretty well with a large image declaring their thieving ways, and advertising my site. I love it when a plan comes together!

P.S. It’s the next day and he’s noticed my fun. Instead of taking down my content though, he simply stripped the images out of the posts. I’ve now added a comment to each post requesting he either remove the post, or comply with the licensing requirements.

P.P.S. He changed his theme, adding an e-mail address to his footer. I sent him an e-mail firmly stating he remove the content or comply, or a DMCA complaint would be filed. He complied and removed all of the content.