[disc] leeching, deeplinking, traffic and a highscore board

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Originally posted by richardpendry
This IS a big issue, and anyone who suggests that it is just something we should put up with because it is "the nature of the internet" is frankly being incredibly naive.

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On the contrary, anyone who thinks that he can single-handedly change the way that the internet works is frankly being incredibly naive. This is the way the internet works; if you don't like it, don't use the internet as a distribution medium.

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Originally posted by richardpendry
Make no mistake, these sites make a LOT of money from this through carrying advertising, simply by stealing other people's work.

I'm not sure everyone here is really aware of this - a high traffic games site with a publishing deal with one of the better ad houses can generate SERIOUS money. These sites DO NOT do it for love or to share games that they like.

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Am I the only one who sees this as an incredible opportunity to market your own website? Once you notice traffic coming in from high-traffic deep-linkers, why not splatter the SWF with adverts for your other games? Adverts for your services as a game writer? If you're getting enough traffic to bring Apache to its knees, you should really be taking advantage of it, not trying to block it.

Richard has the right idea: steal the traffic back, if you can; try to use it for your own purposes; but don't try to stop it.

ant, apart from saying you don't need to post 3 messages after each other I want to share something with you:

First off, there is a difference between good deep linking and bad deep linking. If someone links to your game site then that is good, as you want them to link to it. If they link to a file that gets your members information from a database then that is bad, as you don't want that.

About your street walking thingy. I see the internet as you walking down the street. Anyone can come up to you and say "howdy, how are you?". They start on the outside and then they work themselves further and further into you (deeper you might say). After a while they know what kind of job you have, how your granspa died and so on. But if someone walked over to you and said, "hey, how did your grandpa die?" you would look at them like they were an idiot.

About search engiens. Search engiens follow links and that is how they explore your website, usually from your homepage and then inwards. If you have a page you do not want them to explore then tell them in the robot.txt file you can put on your website. This way they can explore your page for data and games and such but stay away from info not concerning them.

The internet is made for sharing but there is a difference if someone takes something from you you don't want to share. Like if you sit there with your pokeom cards (or any other trading cards) and someone comes up to you and says "hey, I want your watch!".

You have a good point in your last message but remember that nGFX has to pay for the bandwidth while those guys pay nothing and earn from the ads.

LONG POST WARNING
Mind your step.

I think you should look at yourself when using the word "naive" ant512. Are you trying to make the argument that bandwidth stealing is completely fine? and that we shouldn't even be making an effort to stop it?

Stealing bandwidth is similar to going into your local newsagent, reading all the magazines and leaving without paying a cent. Now, that may not be illegal but it is surely frowned upon.

Stealing bandwidth is exactly like sneaking into a movie cinema, watching the movie, perhaps making a bootleg copy while you're at it, and then leaving without having paid. That is illegal and is just like what's happening.

Are you telling me movie cinema's shouldn't bother having a ticket booth? That people should just walk on in regardless?

It costs money to buy films to show, to get the rights make money having people view those films and to pay rent/electicity/upkeep costs for the cinema. Servers are no different. People need to pay for the domain name and GB transfer costs per month.



"steal the traffic back, if you can; try to use it for your own purposes; but don't try to stop it."

Going with the movie cinema analogy still, and going by your support of the above statement, are you saying you wouldn't bother stopping the movie cinema's manager and workers from coming to your home and watching your TV? regardless of whether did or didn't sneak in watch all their movies?

Deep-linking is still bandwidth stealing.

just one quick note about the nature of my deeplink problems:

in order to get the link to the game, one had to read through some javascript methods, or open the game, open the property panel of that page and copy and paste the link from there.

there was NO direct way for openening the game with "normal" hyperlinks, thus no robot would have found the link. if the leecher would have been a "normal" web user, he would not have made the eford to get the link to the games page, or even more work: to extract the name of the swf file (as the embed tag was generated via javascript), it must have taken him some minutes to figure out the name of the file. it would have been WAY easier to just link to the homepage.

remember: i don't mind linking to information that is clearly available. but i took steps to prevent deep-linking this time, and someone spend a lot of time to remove this. it may have been another case if the game would have been hidden deep inside the structure of my page, but you could reach it from the homepage, with a single click.

anyway, i don't see the point here to argue against mr. "you-are-all-naive" ant512, i don't see the point in arguing that even on the web, there is something like copyright. even if there is no copyright, it would have been just fair to ask.

<olli/>, aka nGFX

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I think deep-linking is esseintial to the culture of internet, otherwise google, yahoo etc. won't exist and the internet never have reached the status it has.

Sure it's annoying that it steals bandwidth. But well, if you put something popular (and this is what Dynaminer seems to be and what should make you proud) into the net this will ever happen. See the positive effects of it, your game is spread, your name also (if you promote it in the game) and everything else is something we all have to live with. You can only avoid it by staying out of the net.

A pitty Dynaminer is offline meanwhile. I enjoyed playing it. I hope it will be soon back.

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Originally posted by StenFLASH
Stealing bandwidth is exactly like sneaking into a movie cinema, watching the movie, perhaps making a bootleg copy while you're at it, and then leaving without having paid. That is illegal and is just like what's happening.

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Stealing bandwidth is nothing like sneaking into a movie cinema and enjoying yourself without paying. For the analogy to work, the website in question must:

- Charge visitors to access the site;
- Have a registration system;
- Be secure.

A person who can steal bandwidth from that site has worked out a way of
bypassing the site's security features, thus bypassing the registration process, thus bypassing the payment system. Like the owners of the cinema, the webmaster has implemented security features to prevent unauthorised access. The illegality in this instance, and in your own analogy, is the bypassing of security features.

Back to the initial SWF discussion, we begin to see where the analogy falls apart:

- No copyright infringment is being committed, because the file has not been copied to another server;
- No security features have been bypassed, because there aren't any;
- Deep-linking sites aren't avoiding payment, because the site does not require it.

In fact, there is nothing illegal going on here at all. Inconvenient, maybe; annoying, perhaps; but illegal?

If you want to build your own web cinema model, you encounter two main problems:

- No-one pays for web content, because similar material is invariably available elsewhere for free (not stolen, mind; just similar. For every Flash version of Pac Man that you must pay for, there are a dozen available for free);
- Such a site will never appear in search engines - only the first page will be available for the web crawler to index, and that cannot give a true indication of the site's total content.

You can run such a site if you want, but don't expect to get any traffic, deep-linked or otherwise.

In fact, deep-linking, or "stealing bandwidth", is exactly like one book including a reference to another on the same shelf in a library. The author of the first book didn't write the second, nor did he put the effort into creating it, nor did he spend £x publishing it, but no-one accuses him of stealing the other book. The second author does not cry, "Stop thief!" if he finds someone reading a single paragraph of his work because it was referenced from elsewhere.

If the first author copied the second, then there are grounds for becoming indignant. Similarly, if someone steals your SWF you have reason to be upset. But if someone simply references your site, and uses the internet in the way that it was designed to be used, and does not attempt to illegally bypass security features on your site that you have misguidedly installed, I fail to see that there is a problem.

Should you really get upset at people "stealing your bandwidth", and haven't got the common sense to make use of the extra traffic, move the SWF to a new directory. Any links to the SWF will be broken, and you can rest assured that no-one on the internet will be able to see your game. And then, when you have no traffic at all, you can wonder to yourself: What was the point of writing a game that no-one will see?

EDIT:

Just seen nGFX latest post. If you have taken steps to prevent deep-linking, you have my support. I don't know why you'd do it (I like to get traffic; it's nice to think that other people enjoy what I've written), but if you have actively tried to prevent access to your SWF, and someone has gone out of their way to bypass it, then I'm on your side. How about moving the SWF to a new location and replacing it with a SWF that is nothing but an advert for your own site?

ant, stop beeing an idiot

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Originally posted by ant512
EDIT:
Just seen nGFX latest post. If you have taken steps to prevent deep-linking, you have my support. I don't know why you'd do it (I like to get traffic; it's nice to think that other people enjoy what I've written), but if you have actively tried to prevent access to your SWF, and someone has gone out of their way to bypass it, then I'm on your side. How about moving the SWF to a new location and replacing it with a SWF that is nothing but an advert for your own site?

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:), as said before, i don't really mind the links as such and i put it up for exposure, true, but i also want to keep control over such a piece of work. i granted access to sites who have read the text and asked if they could link the game, np.
and yes i have VERY activly tried to prevent a direct link to the game, cause i want the people to take the entrance to my site, not the window.

sincerely <olli/>

ant512: I don't mind you wasting your time like that to pull apart my analogy. I had to laugh at yours though:

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ant512 - In fact, deep-linking, or "stealing bandwidth", is exactly like one book including a reference to another on the same shelf in a library.

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Ok, so a book gives a reference to another persons book. In the legal world, that reference includes the title of the book and it's Author. That reference is not a complete copy of the referenced book either, but rather a quoted part. The person wanting that book would then go and buy it or borrow it from a library. Meanwhile, the Author got rightful credit and didn't suffer a monthly cost from the reference.

Translating that to the online world:
A site direct links to another site's content, perhaps hiding it within a frameset in a way that hide's the actual owner of the content. Now their site takes credit for that content while the actual owner pays the bandwidth cost with no recognition.

That's the thing most people have a against bandwidth stealing. It's the insult to the injury(cost).

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Originally posted by StenFLASH
Translating that to the online world:
A site direct links to another site's content, perhaps hiding it within a frameset in a way that hide's the actual owner of the content. Now their site takes credit for that content while the actual owner pays the bandwidth cost with no recognition.

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So basically you're saying that deep-linking is OK as long as the deep-linker gives appropriate credit to the linked site? On that point, I totally agree.

No that's not what i'm saying and after reading some of your earlier posts it seem's you've got a skewed view on how things should be. I won't waste any more of my time on you since I can see you're not worth it.

You're right - there's little point in continuing the debate. Personally, I've been using the internet since 1996; I've studied the internet at degree level; I'm a professional web designer; and the continual erosion of the internet's founding principles distresses me. Obviously not everyone thinks of the internet in the same way.

As a final thought on the matter, have a look at this page, discussing the legal ins-and-outs regarding deep-linking:

http://www.gigalaw.com/articles/2000...0-05b-all.html

just poping to give a quick point of view :)

nGFX, that's sad what's happening to your game : i understand how bad you could feel for not being able to display your game, because of bandwith excess due to some 'not-concerted' linking.

However, i think it is a good chance to have your work known better, your name spread farther etc : i think ant512 solution is totally valid here : just move / rename your game swf, and keep the previous linked file as an auto-promotion swf : then the stealer is stolen, you re-appropriate their traffic and make some cheap and unexpected advertising for your activity

You will say that it take some time to do that : of course, but it is little work in regard of the results .

Honestly, if your game is free to play, that you do not intend to sell it to other websites, then, you might have done it for fame and recognition am I wrong ?
Fame and recognition is the prize you pay with that bandwith problem, but not nessecerly because of deep-linking.

I haave few questions :
- if all the sites that are linking you would have asked, would have you said yes ?
- If so, then your problem would be the same now
- by deep linking directly to your game, doesn't it save at least the bandwith that the visitors would have used to navigate the site and go to the game ?

Once again i really feel bad for you and wish that people would have enough education to ASK for things before taking them.
But i also feel, as ant512, that your problem is in the hard core of what the web is meant to be

My other consideration, and that's a totally personnal point of view, is that i think your reaction takes the problem backwards, a bit like the RIAA with the P2P :

You cannot control the flux (english ?) of the internet : however hard you try, there will always be someone that will certainly find the flaw of your system, and you will exhaust yourself to that : so instead of trying to punish such behavior, why don't you find a way to go around it, in a way that is profitable for you : making your own advertising, having a file that redirects on your site, or even ( but that's nasty ) a negociated advertising that will allow to pay some of the sites fees ( i'm talking about advertising only on the deep-linked page, not your actual page from your website ... )

As a last point, i should say that i totally agree with ant512 and youmex views, as much as i think Dynaminer is a great game, and that, unfortunately, you have the (painfull) proof of it :)

nGFX, this is what I would do:

Put your logo in your work with a link to your site and some text below saying "Made by yourName (c) Copyright 2004". Then tell all the gys who deeplink your site that you will send them the swf file to put on their own server or you will just change the name of the game every day. This way you get the recognition you want and you also have your name and a link to your site in the game.

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Originally posted by luxregina
I haave few questions :
- if all the sites that are linking you would have asked, would have you said yes ?

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ok, just to answer you question:
(quick note: a) yes i inteded to sell the game, this was one reason i tried to hide it from "normal" linking.
b) i wanted to test the "playability", but read on ...)
if the linkers have asked me they would have received this answer :
"yes, you can link to the game (please use this link :"link"). as long as a) the game is opened in a seperate window (and not in a frameset with ads). for commercial reasons it may be that i take the game down during the next few weeks, if so, i will let you know. regards, nGFX"
(i had prepared a special page for "linkers")

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- If so, then your problem would be the same now

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nope, not exactly, the vistor would have reached a site where
a) is stated that the game could be licensed.
b) i have had the possiblity to send different "links" to different servers (thus dealing with the traffic).
c) it would have been possible to show other games as well.
d) i could show my sponsors

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- by deep linking directly to your game, doesn't it save at least the bandwith that the visitors would have used to navigate the site and go to the game ?

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as said above, linkers would have been given a "special" page, i didn't want to have "my" ads on a page that should only be linked from my home-page. (providing a "free" play for "my" visitors and a "sponsored" page for "linked" visitors. (also my hp and the games are on different servers, so navigating the site (link is on the first page you reach) will not affect the traffic for the games.)

as said above, one must have made his way through a lot of js-source code to get the "real" link to the game. i would not have been so "pi$$ed" if i had an easy to read "normal" <a href="">game</a> to the game.

edit for Ihoss:
if it would be soo easy :), ... the game uses a "loading framework" and is split into several components (so it is quite easy to make an offline version with better sounds) and it is heavily "branded".

and i did not take the game down because of the traffic, i did take it down for "commercial" purposes (it is still online, but this time "guarded" by a pw protection ...)

<olli/>

then, maybe that 'special' page with the important information could be part of the game, or called by the game itself ? no ?

The fact that you intend to license it, of course, totally change the perspective of the problem :( ...

yep, i have learned my lesson here, next time i release something intended for commercial purposes, it will stated in the game.

(but i didn't want to bother the visitors of ngfx.de with that ...)

<olli/>

don't know ... might be tricky to have done it the way you did :)

For the time it was online and accessible, you can proove that it drew a lot of traffic and interest, thus having a valuable proof to sell your game better :)

ant512, the page you in a way deep linked to talks about deep linking to a page within another site.

I think there's a huge difference between deep linking to a whole page, and a page resource (gif, jpg, swf). I agree, deep linking to a page is what the internet is about, and if it is used in a similar way to references in books or papers, no one will complain.

The following passage was interesting:

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Clearly, Judge Hupp leaves open the possibility for a claim of copyright infringement and unfair competition in cases where the user could be confused as to the source of content or be oblivious to the fact that he had been linked into the interior of another site.

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If you deep link to an image file in you own image-tag, or deep link to a flash movie and embed it in you own page, there's no doubt the user will believe the content is part of your page (unless stated otherwise). The effect is exactly the same as copying the image and placing it on your page, which we all know is not allowed if it is copyrighted. You may not be breaking the law technically, but it certainly does not sound like it's a decent and fair thing to do.

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Originally posted by ant512

Insisting that deep-linking is bad ignores the entire point of the internet, which was to make it easy to link between related documents.

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I don't think anyone is against deep linking, only bad deep linking. You say "related documents". A page with ads and an iframe which is deep linking to a swf on another site can not be called a "related document". That site is leeching, making money and saving bandwidth (money) by deep linking. I don't think this is what the idea of the Internet was about (I've used it since late -94 btw :)).

At the risk of infuriating people yet again with another post, I'm at it again. :D

It all depends on your view of the internet. It was originally conceived as an entity in itself. Think of the internet as an enormous book. Each site is a chapter in the book, and each page on each site is a page within the chapter. Images, MIDI files, SWF files, etc, can be considered to be illustrations on those pages.

In this model, deep-linking to any kind of file is to be encouraged - you want to read the first chapter of a book, and then skip to page 160 to look at the illustration? That's OK. There's no point in printing the illustration twice, as it's a waste of space, so you refer the reader to the image. Similarly, if you want to embed an image on another page within your page, that's OK. You don't need to waste your server's space because someone else is hosting the image.

This is my perspective on the internet - though it is made of disparate parts, the net works as a unit, with websites interacting and co-operating, sharing resources and data to produce a useful tool.

However, as it becomes increasingly commercialised, the internet is slowly adopting a different model. This is the house model - you have to go in through the front door; you have to go through it in the right order (you can't jump from an upstairs bedroom to the kitchen, for example); your browsing experience is controlled by the web designer. Each website forms its own distinct unit. Sites don't link to each other, and if they do, they link to the "front door", usually a graphically-intensive splash page.

Whilst the first model is based on the academic origins of the net (you want to access relevant information as quickly as possible), the second model is much more influenced by commercial mindsets (my website is my online shop - you have to look at the goodies in my storefront before you can access anything, then you can only take what I want to give you, when I want to give it you, subject to various terms and conditions). Continuing the book metaphor, you may want to look at the illustration on page 160, but you can only see it if you've read chapters 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 first.

The model a designer adopts depends on his motivation. Does he intend to add to the pool of knowledge on the net, for no other reason than to improve it, or does he want a web presence solely for self-promotion? Do you protect your SWF files from deep-linking, because you want to promote your own website, or do you upload them for anyone to enjoy?

Neither model is necessarily better than the other; I favour the book model because it more accurately resembles my attitude to the net. The house model (or, perhaps more appropriately, the shop model) seems to be the more dominant at the moment.