Hey all,

Would anyone miss the ability to leech images from other servers inside posts? Simply put, images can be loaded into the middle of forum messages by using a modified HTML code (or link). This gives the user the ability to load an image from a different server every time someone reads the message.

The problem for the club is:

- Some images are very large in size and screw up the layout of the page.

- Some images take a long time to load.

- Images can be moved or deleted (from the host server) and the message left on our club shows red X's and benefit nobody in the long run.

Our alternate method to include an image in a message post is to use the ATTACHMENT feature. The attachment feature is nice because it resamples the image and displays it in a thumbnail. If a user wishes to view the image, they simply need to click on it.

With that said, you might be thinking that it's a pain in the butt to upload your images directly into the forum. However, I have to let you know about a new feature....

If you open the attachment portion of a message post, you'll see a feature that allows you to literally pull an image from another website directly to the message you're writing. It's called "Upload Image from a URL." You can find it when you compose a message by clicking on the "Manage Attachments" button.

Now all of this might sound too technical. So, I'm going to word it easier. I'm thinking about forcing everyone to use the image attachment feature rather than the image link ability. What do you think?

-- Mike

....snipped..cjb....

I'm just guessing, but my guess is that anyone who was claiming copyright infringement would look for deeper pockets than Mike's. I can't imagine that classiczcars.com is turning a huge profit. No offense meant to Mike of course...

Hi Jon (everyone):

It isn't so much a matter of Mike's pockets.. as it is a legal matter related to protecting data rights. (according to the Attorneys that specialize in that area). Data Rights not protected, can be determined by the courts to have been abandoned, and thus become public property. That in turn allows sites with very deep pockets to then reuse the images/text without recourse from the original copyright holder.

As I said - I don't think it would be an issue here... with the exception of the fact that web crawlers now allow copyright holders to scan the entire net for their copyrighted materials, and notify offenders... not so much as to find deep pockets... but rather to simply protect their data rights and copyrights.

Mike may not have deep pockets - but the liability doesn't end with Mike - it extends to his Sponsors who are benefiting from the eyeballs attracted to ClassisZCars.com....and he has therefore to consider them as well. ( I have notified Site Sponsors when the sites themselves fail to remove copyrighted materials).

Don't want to make a big thing of it... but better to have your eyes open when you do things..Just because a technology allows you to do something, doesn't mean it's the thing to do.

FWIW,

Carl

Hi guys,

Well, this thread really went in a different direction than I was expecting!

The legal issues surrounding copyrighted materials hasn't changed. Our club will always be sensitive to that part.

However, I simply want to know if it's a good idea to turn off the automatic image leeching. Nothing else changes.

Oh, NOW I get it. That's not too big a hassle then. Still a couple steps more than the old way of just typing in the img tags and the URL, but not nearly as bad as I was thinking...

The reason I asked the question, in the first place, was to query how many people would be concerned about disabling the img auto-download.

It doesn't appear that too many people are concerned about getting rid of it because there are alternate methods to provide graphics within a post.

In fact, it appears (to me) that disabling the image leeching will protect us in many ways other than just saved bandwidth and message download time.

I vote for turning it off. Anything to speed things up and avoid losing images from old posts. Gary D

I do like being able to put photos in my post like shown in jmortensen's reply #12 but no way am I a computer whiz You know what your doing when it comes to this type of stuff Mike so if eliminating this feature helps the site and makes it easier for you and for people that have dial up, then I guess do what you have to do

My thought is turning it off would benefit a great many more members than it would hurt, the value in the archive lies with what is actually in it, not what dissapears through time.

Someone looking to protect intellectual property is now unfortunately effectively precluded from distributing it anywhere. Microsoft is the best proof of this there is. They spend countless millions of dollars to protect their intellectual property, yet it is never effectively protected. Someone is ALWAYS stealing it, and they know and accept that.

The only real protection is keeping it out of circulation.

Kats offered to lend me a very rare part once, I asked for detailed and measured pictures instead because I didn't want his part to have the loss or damage exposure that a pair of trans-continental trips would have given it.

Will

Mike,

My only concern is when someone decides to write a technical article, I would hope the attached pic can be placed in the text as it is referenced. If the attachments all are gathered at the bottom, they won't easily make sense to all that read them. I remember getting some info from Carl S. and the pics all appeared after the article. Was a bit hard to decifer what went where. If these can still be arranged in the article, I say go for it. If not, I have reservations. Just my opinion.

I'm for keeping the ability to embed an image in a post, if its hosted on this website (eg from the gallery or a posted image).

As for embeding leeched images, i dont mind either way.

The way I see it, if a website doesnt want people leeching there images they should be the ones doing something about it. Its not hard to stop it.

I've decided not to change this ability right now. Thanks for the opinions.

If you do decide to do this in the future, what would happen to the posts that already include leached images?