Whose site is this?

We've just been made aware of the following:

http://www.freewebs.com/waveformidents/

TV Ark's BBC pages and many other sections have been ripped off lock, stock and barrel. The clips and images are even linked directly to our server.

Worst of all - there is no e-mail address. How very convenient. Does anyone know who is responsible?

There is an e-mail address: opttempo555@aol.com. It's on the front page.

If that doesn't work you could always contact Freewebs.

Don't have a clue who it is though.

I don't know who it is, but as Antz said, there is an e-mail address.
But, if you contact Freeviews, they freeze sites like that.
I had to contact them once about my Big Brother site being totally copied and pasted onto someone elses. They responded very quickly.

In regards to the images being hotlinked have you / TV-Ark considered setting up an anti-hotlinking script to run on the server?

Quick example...
Create a .htaccess file and add the following
[code:1:7d67a75acc]RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www.)?allowed-site-1.co.uk(/)?.*$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www.)?.allowed-site-2.com(/)?.*$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www.)?another-allowed-site.net(/)?.*$ [NC]
RewriteRule .(gif|jpe?g|png|bmp)$ hotlink.gif [L] [/code:1:7d67a75acc]

Then create a crappy file (prehaps 1000 x 10px) and name it hotlink.gif and place in the same folder as the htaccess file.

Thanks for the suggestion Charlie. Our BBC1 and BBC2 pages were linked in their entirety, imagine the bandwidth that could be stolen.

Wasn't there a thread bandied about ages ago about this same issue - both on here and TV Ark's forum? Why was nothing suggested implemented back then? Hotlinking is the absolute easiest thing you could possibly do to stop this and probably most effective.

The suggestion in one of today's MHP posts (once you've sifted through the anti-TV Forum comments ) is about generating dynamic filenames and would be a great way of ensuring visitors come via your pages.

Asa

We had a reply from the webmaster today:

idents. just incase you have not realised. you have never invented the idents. you dont own them you never made them. and since there not in use anymore they are in public domain.

The w @ nker! Who does he think he is?

The only problem with stopping hotlinking altogether is that it doesn't actually stop most people from using the stuff, all it means is they upload it to their own server instead so become almost totally untraceable (at least with hotlinking, they show up *very* quickly indeed in the referer logs).

There's some odd types out there though. The other week I even stumbled upon the site of one of those slightly mentally troubled souls who actually borrowed Daddy's card to register TV Whirl's name with an added 're' at the beginning for his own site, as he apparently loves mine so much. o.O

(And why is it, all the troublemakers seem to come from AOL!)

That's crazy! I mean, stealing a site is bad but stealing TV Whirl's identity? Better off stealing TV World, nicer layout.. Stop glaring. In other news...


Sounds familiar, Paul has been active recently so I wouldn't doubt it being him.

An illiterate w anker at that.

...and with that, the site is gone!

Actually for reference the place I was referring to is covered in Teddy Bears, and coloured in a lurid shade of turquoise, which last time I checked was your colourscheme of choice...

But anyway, on a more serious point here, this is starting to get tedious now. Fair enough we've established you dont like my website design, but do you honestly think this pointless following round and bringing it up in every thread whether its related or not is going to make me bend to your will? When I ask for opinions on things, by all means go ahead and wade in with the cynicism, but in the meantime just give it a rest for everyone's sake.