Dealing With MySpace Users

It happened again - some goon hotlinked one of my images.  For those of you who are new, or have a short memory, this happened to me before - some yashco hotlinked my "Fonzie Jumped The Shark" image from the comments section of some site, and I repaid him by altering the image.

Hotlinking basically means that you put an image into your website - or to a comment on someone else's site - that points to the image on my website, rather than uploading a copy of the image to whatever site you're posting to.  While not technically illegal, it's bad etiquette, and basically amounts to raping my bandwidth.  It's also in bad taste to do so without giving some recognition to the person or entity who created it.

This particular gentleman has appropriated my Tony Romo/Snickers image, from my post regarding the Dallas Cowboy's playoff failure last season.  He used it to post a comment on a friend's MySpace page.  It would appear that he's an 18-year-old male, and lives in Texas.

It was a little tough to decide how to deal with it.  He obviously shares my interest in the fortunes of the Dallas Cowboys, but he hotlinked and failed to give me props for the image.  He's also doing it from MySpace, which ultimately prompted me to teach him that with great power ("access to MySpace"), comes great responsibility ("being absolutely clear about your motives, ideals, responsibilities, and intentions").  So, I replaced the original image with something that I thought might clarify this young man's views.

Thus, where his friends previously saw this:

They will now see this:

Click here to see it in action.