Stealing an article and hotlinking its images are bad ideas
Last night, in the spirit of Matariki, and because Lucireâs 25th anniversary in October is almost upon us, I paid tribute to a lot of our team. We also put up on our website our 2019 feature on Violett Beane, which I was always very proud of, since it was the first shoot I organized with the intent that it would be the cover story for both the home edition and for Lucire KSA. In fact, I was very surprised we hadnât done the online version sooner.
Sadly, three websites decided to take our content without our permission. One has already removed their version, and Iâm glad they did it within hours of my contacting them. The other two have dud email addresses, so Iâve had to DMCA them with their hosting companies.
They fed our text through a script, potentially to get around copyright claims.
The tribute story had two images that turned out to be duplicates, so we edited the code to link to the originals, and deleted the newer files. I then realized that they both hotlinked our images, and the deletion left two holes in one of the pirate storiesâwhich meant a perfect and very obvious opportunity for mischief.
The moral of the story is: donât pinch our articles and donât hotlink our images. Haere mai te kÄranga o te tau hou o Matariki!