[The Slipperman]

If another forum is showing screenshots from my forum, for whatever idiotic reason, is this copyright theft?

[bdude]

If you're the copyright owner - you can decide who can use your forum's contents

[Ryan]

Yeah, it really depends on what the pictures are of...Either way, you can prevent this by disallowing hotlinking from your website. If you do that, other websites will not be able to display images stored on your site. The easiest way to do this is in cPanel.

[AzH]

Show me, Mr. M. I need a good laugh.

[eJM]

Disallowing hotlinking doesn't prevent anyone from taking screen shots though. A screen shot is a "picture" you take from your own computer of a view of your whole monitor screen or just a open window or portion of the screen. You save the image and upload it to your own server and display it on your site.

The plus side of content theft for the victim is that the content can't be indexed in search engines except for the file name and alt/title text. The down side is that it can be displayed to appear it originates from the thieving site and its visitors can read/view it. Good or bad, your choice, is that there is usually no link back to the victim site.

The victim can claim copyright violation, but if it is used merely as an illustration or an excerpt, it may be considered fair use. If you can show how it could be harmful to you, you may be able to convince the host or ISP to forcefully remove the content, if the offender doesn't.

Jim

[Ryan]

I know what a screenshot is, and I highly doubt that he is referring to a literal screenshot of his website/forums. My bet is that he has images hosted on his forums that are being lifted elsewhere...Just a hunch

[eJM]

Originally Posted by Ryan

I know what a screenshot is, and I highly doubt that he is referring to a literal screenshot of his website/forums. My bet is that he has images hosted on his forums that are being lifted elsewhere...Just a hunch

Okay, but my hunch is just as valid as yours. When someone says screen shot, I assume only screen shot. Of course, you may be right, but my post, as all my posts do, addresses what has been said and is composed to help all viewers understand what I am saying. I explained screen shot not just for your edification, but the edification of all those who read this topic topic and well into the future of the searchable database of this site.

Your premise that he meant stolen images may be valid and certainly will suggest to the many viewers that hotlink protection might be something they should look into. Besides the feature in cPanel:

Simple online .htaccess generator: Hotlink protection of images with .htaccess
More elaborate PHP method: Hotlink Protection with PHP - PHP Tutorials

There are others too, just do a google search. I use a very effective method that not only prevents people from displaying my images on other sites (unless they save the image and reupload it, which anyone can do anywhere), but it will get me more visitors.

For instance, if I were to try to display an image from my flooring site here in this topic, using standard BBCode, you'll only see a red X (in IE - in other browsers, you may see nothing):

But I still want people to see the image and maybe even stick around to see other content, so I don't completely bar you from viewing the image. You can see it if you click the URL to it: http://www.thefloorpro.com/images/carpet_installer.jpg

Not only can you see the picture, you also have a personal invitation to spend time at my site.

But anyway, I still think he was talking about screen shots - literally.

R'gards,

Jim

[The Slipperman]

eJM's right. The clown's are taking screenshots of my site and posting them elsewhere. If they want to read my site, or even (heaven forbid) join in the discussion, they can bleedin' visit the site and give me some goddam Adsense page impressions!!!!!!!!!!

I've been e-mailing imageshack to get the images removed, so they've took to just copy/pasting entire threads.

Can you believe the stupidity of some people? Why would someone act so pathetic?

Anyhow, I figured they should all visit my site rather than read it on some grubby forumup one, so how am I best getting the monkeys to pack it in? Other than brute force?

[Ryan]

Ah, well, you should've asked here before taking action yourself. You'll find a pretty good plan of attack here that will bring those images down. Sorry to the non-supporters, that's a thread in our supporters forum

It actually goes through the process of another member of ours having content stolen and placed on imageshack...and I've got a few things to do that will bring the content down quickly

[The Slipperman]

Yeah, I managed to find your posts and used the info to get the images taken off ImageShack. Cheers for that.

So now, the tossflaps are just copy/pasting my content onto their forum.

I've followed your advice, and contacted their host. It's a free forum hosted by forumup. But they don't have a contact e-mail so I had to just post in their TOS Violations forum. I doubt they're going to give a crap.