During my time off last week, I spent hours writing some new free web content tools for PaganNews.com so that people can add bits and pieces from our website to their own. Here is an example:

Cute, eh? The way this is set up, it changes every day, so a new image gets displayed. I don't have to do this. I could just run the website without this. Its just something for people to have on their website. By calling the javascript code, our content and control of the tools we provide is protected. Try right clicking on the image. See? There is a level of protection built into it, so if you really want to steal it you can, but not without realizing that that is what you are doing. Now, one of the reasons I did this was because we had someone out there that insisted on copying entire tracts of the site off onto theirs on a daily basis. After yelling at them, I calmed down and came up with the above tools so they can use our content, but we can control it.

But instead of using these tools as they're meant to, they're hacking into the javascript code and pulling the html code out of it, removing our copy protection and setting it up to be static content on their site. This really pisses me off, because despite their apparent happiness with the tools on the one hand, it is clear on the other that they know exactly what they are doing, because they only copied the pieces of code that would allow them to display what they wanted, and not the copy protection. If this keeps up, I am going to have pull remote access altogether, otherwise the extra bandwidth they generate, and the risk of action from the artists for not adequately protecting their work is going to drive the site OUT OF BUSINESS.

I am so sick of people abusing my good nature. It happens at work, at home and on the net. Every now and then I rail against it and try to be an asshole, but it never lasts very long since I just end up pissing off people I don't want to piss off.

I did write and email to this person this morning. Here it is:

Hello (Bastard-code-stealer),

I am pleased to see you like our new Daily deity. One of the reasons we were able to do this is because within the Javascript code that we provide, we are able to protect our artists work from people right clicking on the image, and copying it off. The other reasons that we supply the java script code and not the html code is because we have to pay for our bandwidth, so we only wish to release one image on a daily basis. If people (such as yourself) use the source html instead of the javascript code, then our bandwidth usage increases exponentially, quite possibly beyond what we can afford. For example, when I go to your daily deities page, I see five different versions of daily deity showing up. Each person that visits your site will generate 5 times the traffic. If we exceed our bandwidth allowance, we are shut down, plain and simple.

I would therefore ask you to use the tools we have provided. For the daily deity, add this code to your web site:

(script language="javascript" src="http://www.pagannews.com/gods.js">(Note: I had to use ( instead of < in the journal to get the damn thing to show up)

I recommend you just add it once. You will not need to keep updating the page every day.

Please confirm within 24 hours that you have read and understood this :)

Thanks,

(Catpewk)

So now I'll see what they do next. I also see they've been doing the same thing with some of our other content too. I can't ban their site because they come in through AO-Hell, which means I'd be banning a bunch of other people too. But I may do just that if they don't start behaving. I'll put up a little notice for AOL users saying "Sorry, the reason you can't access this site is because this nimrod (give link) has been stealing our code. If you can make them stop, then I will grant AOL access again"

If anyone out there has any other ideas, or a different point of view, please let me know. Am I being silly about this? Am I wrong? I'd love to hear some other opinions...