Google Redesigns Image Search, Raises Copyright and Hosting Concerns 203
An anonymous reader writes "Google has recently announced changes to its image search. The search provides larger views of the images with direct links to the full-sized source image. Although this new layout is being praised by users for its intuitiveness, it has raised concerns amongst image copyright holders and webmasters. Large images can now easily be seen and downloaded directly from the Google image search results without sending visitors to the hosting website. Webmasters have expressed concerns about a decrease in traffic and an increase in bandwidth usage since this change was rolled out. Some have set up a petition requesting Google remove the direct links to the images."
What? (Score:2)
Webmasters have expressed concerns about . . . . . an increase in bandwidth usage
Google gets the image from the originating website, or I go there and get it myself. Either way, somebody (me or Google) has to go to the website to get the image. How does this cause increased bandwidth usage?
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In fact, it causes reduced bandwidth usage because you don't have to download some stupid ad-filled (and possibly malware-infested) web page that you don't want to see, the way the old image search did.
If they don't like it, block any requests with a Google referrer string.
Re:What? (Score:5, Informative)
In fact, it causes reduced bandwidth usage because you don't have to download some stupid ad-filled (and possibly malware-infested) web page that you don't want to see, the way the old image search did.
If they don't like it, block any requests with a Google referrer string.
This has been answered in the branch above. You can easily exceed your hosted bandwidth quota (with zero ad-generated revenue) by having a high-rez photo from your site pop up in a google image search, especially in a situation where something you have on file becames the topic of a high number of searches.
Even if you don't serve that photo normally on your web pages, but simply provide a button or thumbnail to click for the small percentage of viewers that want to see the high-res.
Most visitors don't click the high-rez button or thumbnail. The few that do, don't matter. Until Google indexes it, then all bets are off.
Some (failed) web designers only put the high-rez image in, then shrink it into a box via the html IMG tag. (Then they wonder why people complain that their web loads slowly). These guys would see very little difference in this case, unless of course Google sees a surge of searches that just happen to find your Nattily Portman collection.
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I'd go further than this, honestly, I'm sick of people whining about this sort of thing.
The internet was created for one purpose - information sharing, if you don't want your information shared then get it off the web, otherwise don't cry when it is shared.
Yes that may mean there's a cost to you, in terms of hosting, but that's part of what the web spirit always was - that people share information for free at their time and expense, or as part of their employment (i.e. academics sharing data).
I'm sick of th
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This has been answered in the branch above. You can easily exceed your hosted bandwidth quota (with zero ad-generated revenue) by having a high-rez photo from your site pop up in a google image search, especially in a situation where something you have on file becames the topic of a high number of searches.
And that was answered in my comment above. If you don't want people using image search, block them.
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Because google goes directly to the full sized image, not the thumbnail on the web page. Grabbing the image directly creates no impressions, so the bandwidth burned per impression shoots up.
It looks and works great! (Score:2)
It looks and works great! Now they just need to fix the SafeSearch bug [slashdot.org] so I don't have to use Bing Images instead (which, as Microsoft as it is, even gives explicit suggestions when its safe setting is off).
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Well at least it now works on Android. The prior version was just about impossible to use on Android.
Solves a annoying problem. (Score:5, Interesting)
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Yeah, they want you to go their payment page and sign up for unlimited access.
If this kind of image mining is a problem (Score:5, Interesting)
If you're running a website with Apache, you can configure Apache to look at the HTTP_REFERER header and see where the web surfer was when they made the request for the image. If they weren't on your website, (or if they don't provide the header, an act to be widely discouraged), just re-direct them to your home page instead of serving the image.
I would think that other web servers could do the same thing, one way or another.
For most people, it costs money -- perhaps not a huge amount, but still, real money -- to put up a website and serve content to the world. The expectation, if not agreement, is that you'll look at the site's content on the site.
The webmaster's position is no more hostile than that of the deep miner: There are expectations, but no promises.
Google's search goes far beyond fair use, as far as I'm concerned.
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If they weren't on your website, (or if they don't provide the header, an act to be widely discouraged)
Excuse me?
No, actually, it's not an act to be "widely discouraged". Why? Because I don't trust you. Shit, I run several large sites and I wouldn't want my users to trust me with that sort of thing. Ok, I can at least see a case for providing it for intra-site requests, but it's absolutely a bad thing from a privacy standpoint to tell every site where you were previously.
Plus, you know, what with Google serving their results over HTTPS, there's not going to be a ref. header for the subsequent request to
Re:If this kind of image mining is a problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Not a problem. No header, no pages, and off you go to somewhere else. You don't trust me -- then I don't trust you.
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Although, I tell you what: You get HTTP_REFERER augmented or replaced with a YES-NO flag that tells me if the browser is making a request from within my site or without, and I'd stop requiring HTTP_REFERER entirely.
Or, have the browsers submit a blank HTTP_REFERER for anywhere but where you are. So if you hit me from elsewhere.com, I get a blank, but if you hit me from mysite.com, I get "mysite.com."
See, I don't care where you've been at all. What I care about is where you are.
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The only ads that bother me are pop ups, and I don't ever serve those. I don't block ads myself, though I like to think I'm pretty quick to knock off a pop-up. Don't like pop-up menus either, come to that... if I didn't click on it, I don't want it to react. Hover menus are stupid, IMHO.
I actually think it's useful that they offer me things that I might actually want. Much more interesting than ads for things I'm not even remotely interested in. If I go look at monitors on Amazon, I see banners with monitor
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Agreed, but I think this will only make the problem worse, as increased use of referrer checking will redirect users from Google Images to some cheesy splash-page that serves nothing but ads.
I liked the "original context" feature with the source page displayed in a frame. I guess the change was inevitable though, it seemed like more and more asshat webmasters were using those damn "break out of frames" scripts, derailing the image search. Half the time the page was some poorly-optimized blog, so the image I
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Exactly.
And what do you do with your dewatermarked photo? You stick your own watermark on it, place the picture on a gallery website, stick tonnes of ads on it, then SEO and submit to Google and spam your url everywhere to get it listed.
It's the circle of life.
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Thank you.
I'm Sofa King We Tod Did (Score:3)
Took me 5 seconds https://www.google.ca/#hl=en&tbo=d&spell=1&q=robots+.txt+for+images&sa=X&ei=FJYRUeytEIeGiQLemYGIDg&ved=0CCsQvwUoAA&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.&bvm=bv.41934586,d.cGE&fp=7c0022b148dcff04&biw=1680&bih=860 [google.ca] with the results http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35308 [google.com]
How about a small effort from the site owners?
Re:I'm Sofa King We Tod Did (Score:4, Interesting)
So, your answer is that because google has decided it has the right to redistribute copyrighted images in full resolution in most cases, that everyone else on the web should go to Google and opt out of their caching system? Site owners are in coorperation with google, we like google when they don't do fucked up illegal things... We see thumbnails as "fair use", maybe. We don't mind much as long as the users end up on our site to see the image. Google understands advert revenue funded websites... They are one. So, it's really hard to understand users who want free stuff saying that we have to change our business practices, and maybe not even give them free stuff (or make it harder to find free stuff) simply because a bigger free stuff provider decides they can get away with infringing copyrights of everyone.
Your solution is not a solution. A real solution will be to address the issues. Hell, maybe while google is processing the images to reduce their resolution and run heuristic matching algorithms for their other-sizes and search terms feature, they can water-mark them with the domain name of the site they downloaded the image from.
Or, let's simply turn your moronic suggestion on it's ear. Why don't we all just say: Hey Google, If you want the feature to work that way, you needed to GET PERMISSION FROM EVERYONE BEFORE INFRINGING THEIR COPYRIGHTS. Fuck you and your opt-out "let's piss off everyone, then apologize until we get our way", Facebook feature roll-out model.
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google has decided it has the right to redistribute copyrighted images in full resolution
They've done no such thing. They distribute a smaller thumbnail, and link directly to the original.
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In a lot of cases you don't have permission to post "the original" without a corresponding copyright notice on the page. In that case, linking directly to the image without displaying the copyright notice is a copyright violation on Google's part. Even most Creative Common licenses have that particular term.
Google's doing this because they know they can get away with it. But until copyright reform is enacted, however, they're violating the copyright of thousands of artists at this very moment.
That's not rig
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In a lot of cases you don't have permission to post "the original" without a corresponding copyright notice on the page. In that case, linking directly to the image without displaying the copyright notice is a copyright violation on Google's part. Even most Creative Common licenses have that particular term.
Isn't the copyright notice also listed in the image's metadata, which is still available if you save Google's copy of the image?
If yes, there's no violation. It's not a legal impairment that you require a tool to read it; fine print on contracts have been equally binding for centuries and this is no different.
Besides, fair use of an image has always been legal, and online re-use of online images have been ruled fair use many times. As long as you don't claim ownership, your own copyright or similar, or use
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google has decided it has the right to redistribute copyrighted images in full resolution
They've done no such thing. They distribute a smaller thumbnail, and link directly to the original.
Oh hell, I have a little Karma to burn...
I want Google to index my website to so that it is discoverable but I also want the search results to contain just enough data to induce people to visit my site looking for more. I suppose that as the site owner I could just block Google completely from indexing my site as other people here have suggested. That might work if Google was just one of 20 search engines and had, say, a 12% market share. Unfortunately Google has a hugely dominant 90% market share while Goo
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1) You want your content publicly accessible in order to increase your exposure.
2) You want to control who has access to your content (only those that visit your site and I assume view your ads).
Please pick one, you can't have both.
Re:I'm Sofa King We Tod Did (Score:4, Insightful)
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That's not what the sites want. They like the older system where their site was displayed along side the image, so they at least get some exposure. They want people to find images on their sites and visit them, or at least see their logo and advertising. Google took away the site preview feature though now you just get a black page with the imagine in the middle and a link.
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The solution is a simple technical one that was designed for this exact purpose, ie: don't serve the images unless the referrer is your own site. The only problem here is your unwillingness to modify YOUR site to meet YOUR requirements.
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Hey Google, If you want the feature to work that way, you needed to GET PERMISSION FROM EVERYONE BEFORE INFRINGING THEIR COPYRIGHTS. Fuck you and your opt-out "let's piss off everyone, then apologize until we get our way", Facebook feature roll-out model.
This was tried before. It just wasn't practical at all. If search engines had waited until they got permission from everyone before they could index everyone's public content, most public government sites, most public newspaper sites, most public personal web sites, etc. would have been excluded by default.
The advantage and the problem with the http protocol is that it's copy-agnostic. And if you really want to control the dissemination of your content, you better put it behind a wall of some kind. Don't po
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So, your answer is that because google has decided it has the right to redistribute copyrighted images in full resolution in most cases, that everyone else on the web should go to Google and opt out of their caching system?
As about 20 other people have pointed out, that's not really what Google's doing. The full-resolution images are hotlinked from Google image search. Ironically, it would be easier on site owners if Google were directly lifting the high-resolution images, but ... copyright.
Why don't we all just say: Hey Google, If you want the feature to work that way, you needed to GET PERMISSION FROM EVERYONE BEFORE INFRINGING THEIR COPYRIGHTS.
I think this is maybe a good place to ask, why did you publish the content in the first place?
If It's Copyright That They're Worried About (Score:5, Interesting)
IIRC, jpeg images allow header data that includes copyright info. If you don't care about use of the image, leave it blank. If you do, insert the copyright info. Google's bot can look for copyright data and if it finds it, it can link to the original html page. Otherwise, it can give a link for a direct download.
I think there was something on /. awhile back that talked about some system for the owner to indicate how an image could be used, e.g. commercial, non-commercial, free and so on. Couldn't find it on a quick search, but that might be another option to tell Google how to handle an image.
Referer Header! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Heh. Some years ago, BlackPlanet.com (basically "MySpace for African-Americans" at the time) actually hotlinked an image on a site of mine into their templating system. It wasn't just random users, this pic was built straight into their publishing platform, meaning tens of thousands of users were selecting this particular image on my server to be part of the theme of their BlackPlanet page.
Didn't take them too long after my RewriteRule to rehost it on their own server.
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Didn't take them too long after my RewriteRule to rehost it on their own server.
lemonparty.jpg served for those referred from their site?
Simple (Score:2)
# cat - > robots.txt
User-agent: *
Disallow: /
<crtl-D>
#
Problem solved!
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This story is just another "wah-wah-wah I'm stupid" rant. It's not even a rant, it's just a jibber.
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You mean this? Prevent your images from appearing in Google search results [google.com].
BUT BUT THAT'S TO EASY!.... I need to vent my anger and bust out my lawyers! I should NOT have to protect my own property. Google should automatically know what's public domain and what's not. geeez.
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User-agent: Googlebot-Image /hires_images/
Disallow:
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simple. does the job. problem solved.
this is a non-issue.
Be careful, Google (Score:2)
As a user, I like the convenience but the last thing I want is for all kinds of legal disputes and possible regulations as chances are they'll overreach in banning what Google and other search engines are allowed to do, and we'll end up with less than we had before Google pushed it like this. "Don't be evil", and at least allow sites to opt out.
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You can opt out.
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Yes, and the folks on slashdot are really big on opt-out instead of opt-in... ..oh wait.. no they fucking arent. The folks on slashdot fucking hate opt-out, and rightly fucking so.
Posting your content on a publicly accessible URL IS opt-in.
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.... oh.
In that case I don't understand what the fuss is. I guess nowadays we just assume that people are incapable of turning off things that they don't like (same goes for things like all the fuss about Ubuntu's Amazon search, which you can just uh... turn off.)
Is copyright that different for various art? (Score:2)
Can google show a link with summary to a news article? Can they just show the entire article?
Can google show a link with summary to an image (i.e. thumbnail)? Can they just show the entire image?
I cannot imagine any reasonable person would differentiate the two situations. The content the Google user is actually looking for is the high-res image itself (my assumption based on my own personal decision process that leads me to visit images.google.com). As soon as you start serving up the full content, yo
I can see both sides (Score:4, Interesting)
On one hand, I think the site owners deserve the traffic. On the other hand, it seems like at least a quarter of the pages end up being dead when I click on them, or redirect to sites attempting to install malware on old versions of Firefox, or seemingly have nothing whatsoever to do with the image that's supposedly there.
A compromise might be to allow users to open the referring page in context immediately, open the cached page (with live content) after a 2-second delay, and allow users to grab the full-sized image directly from Google's cache after a 10-second CAPTCHA-guarded delay. Then, users would have every incentive to try viewing the page in context, falling back to the cached page if the original page ends up being down/borked/whatever, and being able to grab the cached image if all else fails.
Going a step further, Google could come up with some free digital watermarking scheme that allows a 48-bit (give or take) payload to be encoded into the image at a user-selected strength (allowing him to balance robustness, file size, and visibility... pick any two of the three).
The upper few bits (let's say, 4) would indicate the version. Initially, it would be 0001.
The next 40(give or take) bits would be globally-unique, and allow somebody who knows the value to obtain meta info about you in a sensible manner. If they're all 0, it means you're using a generic permissions watermark that doesn't identify ownership, but simply restricts use.
The lower 4 bits specify explicit restrictions
* do not contextually-index
* do not cache full-sized image
* do not perform face recognition of any kind
* do not index for similarity to other images
A value of "0000" would allow search engines to index the image, unless you restricted them in some industry-standard way via metadata referenced to your unique id. For the generic value with all 0s, 0000 means "go ahead and index this".
A value of "1111" would indicate that the image, when encoded with a 4-bit watermark, should not be indexed in any way, shape, or form, regardless of future extensions to the standard that might define additional permissions, and regardless of what any indirectly-referenced meta-info might or might not say. Let's call this the "Stop Facebook from Permissions Creep in a GPLv3-like manner" anti-permission.
Sample? (Score:3)
I think that if I was a photographer, I would be OK with Google caching full quality images as long as they put their own annoying watermark all over it with the URL where the image came from clearly visible.
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I think that if I was a photographer, I would be OK with Google caching full quality images as long as they put their own annoying watermark all over it with the URL where the image came from clearly visible.
I think if you were a photographer looking to have such a feature you should just hire a reasonably competent webdeveloper for a day and have them setup such a thing for you. Can't be more than 20 lines of python/perl/php code really.
Bad or good (Score:2)
Google hosting and delivering the large image ... bad. Googling showing where the website makes the image available to everyone ... good. Webmasters: don't like it? Then don't deliver it. That's what the referrer is for.
I'm Sorry But... (Score:2)
Another example of feature creep (Score:2)
If I'm really fast, I can get to the links at the (ever moving away) bottom of the page and find my way back to the old GIS, but only if I'm fast enough.
Please, Google, put these coders on a project that NEEDS improvement, and give us a useable GIS back. Thank you.
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Do not worry about safe search it is broken too. I posted to Google a complaint that if you mispell the word COLD as COOLD it brings up X rated Amine even with SaveSearch ON.
Though I did find that Google does not page to enter complaints of there products. Just others using their products. (google+, Blogger,...)
I Need All the Help I Can Get (Score:2)
As someone who uses Google Image Search quite a bit, I have this to say:
Please.
Someone look at my images, either at my site [botaday.com] or at Google [google.com]
Re:does not compute (Score:5, Informative)
Re:does not compute (Score:4, Informative)
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Retard.. things are copywritten automatically when they are published. What you just suggested is - never publish anything online.
Your post is covered by copyright
Linux - copyright
slashdot's html - copyright
Do you know what copyright is?
Why is slashdot filled with retards these days.
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wow. "Retard.. things are copywritten.." ..."Do you know what a copyright is"
When I try to type copywritten, it get a red underline. My PC doesn't know what copywrite is.
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Retard.. things are copywritten (sic) automatically when they are published.
Why is slashdot filled with retards these days.
I think you got your answer.
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Exactly. They make something publicly accessible, and then complain when the public accesses it.
Re:does not compute (Score:5, Informative)
What's going on is fairly obvious if you read the article linked in the sentence "Webmasters have expressed concerns about a decrease in traffic and an increase in bandwidth usage since this change was rolled out."
The article says nothing about an increase in bandwidth usage. The anonymous reader who submitted the article obviously just made that part up, as anonymous people on /. do, without regard for whether it made sense or accurately reflected the link being given.
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scenario 2 is less bandwidth, not more, because you'd be serving the same image either way
Not necessarily.
Most web designers use a thumbnail or a medium resolution photo on the web page. They do this so that the web paints fast.
But they also know that most people do not click for the high-res image. This saves them bandwidth, often enough to
serve the entire page in less total transmitted data than if they always sent the big images.
So you may well not be serving the same image either way, especially if you have a clue about web design.
But with google finding and showing the large ones, it could become more expensive.
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Really the same issue webmasters had with deep-linking where Google sends the searcher straight to the page they wanted without having to wade through the front end of the website. And yes, the same mitigation techniques such as robots.txt and refferring block apply with the same drawbacks of those searchers not bothering with the site that's making things more difficult for them.
Re:does not compute (Score:4, Insightful)
What's "Bing"?
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If you even read the summary, let alone TFA you'll see:
"The search provides larger views of the images with direct links to the full-sized source image."
Re:does not compute (Score:5, Insightful)
If you even read the summary, let alone TFA you'll see:
"The search provides larger views of the images with direct links to the full-sized source image."
Yes, I did read TFA. And nowhere does it explain how you can have decreased traffic but increased bandwidth usage. Because it's not possible. Decreased traffic = decreased bandwidth usage.
Here's the real problem (quote from TFA):
When people get the full resolution image, they have no reason to click to go to the URL.
Dear "Webmaster", nobody cares about your shitty website packed full of annoying ads. Get over it already.
Re:does not compute (Score:5, Insightful)
You used to get traffic actually visiting your site. That meant full page loads, but a lot of that is text which is low bandwidth. You now have less traffic (unique IPs hitting your site), but they're JUST downloading hi-res images which leads to a net increase in bandwidth.
Also, ads don't have to be shitty and annoying. Slashdot uses ads, and even though I can I don't turn them off because they're relatively passive. Hosting and bandwidth cost money, and a lot of sites rely on small ad revenue to help offset those costs.
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Google always offered links directly to the original image, though it did load the actual site in the background. And you've always been able to prevent the direct image links by referer control.
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You used to get traffic actually visiting your site.
You used to get people who grudgingly went to your site to click save as...
You now have less traffic (unique IPs hitting your site), but they're JUST downloading hi-res images which leads to a net increase in bandwidth.
You get the same amount of traffic (unique IPs), but they're just going to the image, not your webpage. Bandwidth use is hardly going to change. You're not going to see an influx of new users if your main source of hits was google image search.
If your content outside of the images was not worth the users attention, you'll get less actual visitors. If you don't like it, there's been ways to block this kind of use for years, but that w
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Then why do you like the image so much? It is, after all, part of their 'shitty' website.
if someone started a site called 'oogle' (Score:2, Insightful)
and all it did was send requests to google and re-display them without ads or with different ads, then google would be the one complaining.
Re:does not compute (Score:4, Interesting)
If someone clicks the Google Image Search 'high-resolution' link for one of my photos from Flickr, they get a medium-resolution version [staticflickr.com] with no description, attribution or copyright information. (Example search page here [google.com].
If they go to the ad-free Flickr page [flickr.com], they get links to much higher resolution versions, associated images and also get informed that it's under a super-open Creative Commons Attribution licence.
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If someone clicks the Google Image Search 'high-resolution' link for one of my photos from Flickr, they get a medium-resolution version [staticflickr.com] with no description, attribution or copyright information.
You don't embed that in the EXIF information?
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Also, "Get over it already" is a pretty obnoxious phrase.
Dear "user" (Score:2)
Dear user, if you don't like my shitty website, don't click on my shitty images.
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Oh, I get it now, You're a moron. You don't understand the difference between thumbnail images and higher-resolution files.
Maybe it's more that OP doesn't understand how Google image search works. I always thought that Google image search pulled in the full-sized image from the remote server, and then resizing into a thumbnail was done either on Google's servers or in the web browser. But if I understand you correctly, Google image search was previously smart enough to pull in the thumbnails that were already on the remote site (if any even existed).
It probably also has to do with a different method of measuring traffic. O
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Dear "Webmaster", nobody cares about your shitty website packed full of annoying ads. Get over it already.
Spoken like a typical leech. No surprise, but always amazing.
Absolutely! - I know I am, and I know many others are... Leeches that is. Proud user of AdBlock-style software for two decades.
Advertising has gone from bad to painfully awful in amazingly short time, rendering most pages useless without ad-blocking software. It began with that first animated banner, blinking or jumping to attract attention and today you get full page ads, competely blocking the real page, complete with loud music, a semi-yelling salesman or worse.
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Am I the only person amused by the concept of "stealing" something from a website that makes it publicly available?
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It's called hot linking or leeching and it has been a headache forever. You want to show content + ads but your server is used just to pull an image, thus no traffic and high bandwidth.
Fighting the good fight:
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www\.)?cyberciti.biz/.*$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^.*\.(bmp|tif|gif|jpg|jpeg|jpe|png)$ - [F]
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$ curl http://www.cyberciti.biz/deep/link/path/yourimage.jpg [cyberciti.biz] -o yourimage.jpg
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You want to show content + ads but your server is used just to pull an image, thus no traffic and high bandwidth.
I think what you meant was... you want to make your content publicly accessible in order to increase your exposure, but you also want ad revenue. What happens is that once you make your content publicly accessible you cannot force people to also view your ads, so your server is used just to pull an image, thus no ad revenue and higher bandwidth.
It's called having your cake and eating it too. You can't make your content publicly accessible and then complain when the public accesses it in a way you don't li
Re:does not compute (Score:5, Informative)
Lots of sites put hi-rez images on file, and link to them via a thumb nail.
The majority of visitors don't request the hi-rez images, at least not all of them.
But posting a link to a high-rez image can get your bandwidth slammed, serving images, but nobody requesting the web pages. Especially if its porn, or happens to hit the search topic of the moment. Without the ability to serve ads, these websites make no money.
Of course, if the complainers had an actual clue, they could just put a robots.txt file in their image storage, which Google seems to honor.
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Really?
Less people visiting the pages = less traffic
Browsers only pulling images from the pages = Increase in bandwidth
Wrong.
Browsers only pulling images use less bandwidth that browsers pulling the entire page.
obviously not many web masters on /. anymore (Score:2)
if you run a website you know damn well that having google put full res image download link will massively increase your bandwidth usage with absolutely 0 increase in traffic.
Re: (Score:2)
The cost of running your website is not Google's problem. If you don't want someone downloading something from your website, don't put it on your website.
Re: (Score:2)
You have the option not to appear in the search listings. Perhaps try that, that will reduce people stealing your bandwidth.
Re: (Score:3)
So, use robots.txt to remove yourself from their search listings. Problem solved.
Re: (Score:2)
I doesn't have to be all or nothing with robots.txt. You can simply exclude certain paths, like /pics, and then the stuff in there won't be indexed. Quite simple and handy actually.
Re: (Score:2)
I think it still exists?
It still exists. But, technically, can't your web crawler just ignore it?
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Google does NOT behave itself. It ignores crawl speed, among other things.
Google does whatever the heck it wants. It's Google.
Re:robots.txt (Score:5, Funny)
It's also a bit dumb. It's been playing my webserver at a variant of reversi for the last 12 months (one of the links at the end of each game is to start a new game, which it duly follows...)
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But is it winning?
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Here's the thing. Individual users (very) rarely hit tons of pages all at one time. If those pages involve server time -- say they involve DB lookups -- it doesn't take long before a big spider can do some real pipe-choking.
Google *should* obey the crawl-delay directive; there's no decent excuse whatsoever to not do so. A site that is perfectly adequate for it's legit users can be brought to its knees by a crawler that doesn't obey crawl-delay.
Google should fix this -- it's straight-up broken. The assumptio
Re: (Score:2)
It isn't even just a button. Do your search, then sit back and tap the cursor keys on your keyboard, and you'll zip though tons of images in no time.
Re: (Score:2)
MegaUpload was not evil - or copyright-infringing, except in the warped minds of some very naive FBI agents...