Different copyright question

[xKiv]

I know the GitP FAQ forbids reposts of comics.

I have seen the comics *linked to* from other sites - that is, the images themselves are inlined, so they appear on the other site, but they are loaded from the www.giantitp.com site.
One of the people there defended this practice with (effectively) "this is not a repost, because we did not copy anything" and "this is not a copyright infingement" (translations mine).

What's the official position on this?

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More context: it is a forum on a discussion server; the forum is dedicated to (a certain group of) OotS readers. Every strip (since # i-don't-know) is shown there and then commented upon.
Other OotS-related activities are discussed there, like "we are going to order a bunch of merchandise, who will chip in for the postal".

What I am reporting here is definitely not *meant* as any sort of ingringement.

And no, I asked them if they had a permission (from The Giant) and nobody confirmed.

[Emperor Tippy]

I know the GitP FAQ forbids reposts of comics.

I have seen the comics *linked to* from other sites - that is, the images themselves are inlined, so they appear on the other site, but they are loaded from the www.giantitp.com site.
One of the people there defended this practice with (effectively) "this is not a repost, because we did not copy anything" and "this is not a copyright infingement" (translations mine).

What's the official position on this?

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PM Rich, or WampaX so that they can get the lawyers to send a ceist and desist letter.

Those sites are blantently breaking the rules and potentially profiting from advertising on their page (which peopel only see because of the OoTS comic).


More context: it is a forum on a discussion server; the forum is dedicated to (a certain group of) OotS readers. Every strip (since # i-don't-know) is shown there and then commented upon.
Other OotS-related activities are discussed there, like "we are going to order a bunch of merchandise, who will chip in for the postal".

What I am reporting here is definitely not *meant* as any sort of ingringement.

And no, I asked them if they had a permission (from The Giant) and nobody confirmed.
They are legally free to dicuss OoTS whenever and whereever they feel like and have stuff shipped to them in any way that they can come up with.

[Zherog]

PM Rich, or WampaX so that they can get the lawyers to send a ceist and desist letter.

Those sites are blantently breaking the rules and potentially profiting from advertising on their page (which peopel only see because of the OoTS comic).

It also "steals" bandwidth from this site - which we can all see is a big problem.

[bluish_wolf]

Wait, he doesn't allow reposts? Wouldn't that reduce bandwidth usage? I don't understand.

[Fax Celestis]

Wait, he doesn't allow reposts? Wouldn't that reduce bandwidth usage? I don't understand.

"Reposting" is not the same as "hotlinking". Reposted images might solve a bit of a bandwidth issue, while hotlinking (which is what this other site is doing) increases the load on the server.

[Roland St. Jude]

And neither is something a copyright holder should allow to be done with impugnity. Sure, letting someone repost your work may save bandwidth, but it also allows them to 1) dilute the strength of your IP and/or 2) profit from your work.

Please tell them to stop and/or send WampaX a PM with the site info.

[xKiv]

And neither is something a copyright holder should allow to be done with impugnity. Sure, letting someone repost your work may save bandwidth, but it also allows them to 1) dilute the strength of your IP and/or 2) profit from your work.

Please tell them to stop and/or send WampaX a PM with the site info.

1) Told them to stop even before I asked here. Few of them were content with just posting normal links to the comic (like www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0450.html). Others were very insistent on linking the strips directly.
That is why I went to ask here.

2) I already sent a PM to The Giant after the first reply. Should I PM WampaX too?

[Rawhide]

Can you please PM me the link?

[bluish_wolf]

And neither is something a copyright holder should allow to be done with impugnity. Sure, letting someone repost your work may save bandwidth, but it also allows them to 1) dilute the strength of your IP and/or 2) profit from your work.

Please tell them to stop and/or send WampaX a PM with the site info.

Since the website is on the bottom of every comic, I don't see that would be the case.

Likewise, I don't see how anyone could profit from reposting a free webcomic. I'm sure Rich gets most of his money from merchandise and donations.

[Zherog]

Since the website is on the bottom of every comic, I don't see that would be the case.

Well, it absolutely takes bandwidth from this site for them to post the comic there. And that bandwidth use continues every time somebody loads the page.


Likewise, I don't see how anyone could profit from reposting a free webcomic. I'm sure Rich gets most of his money from merchandise and donations.

Revenue from ads are often derived by page hits. If they get large page counts by people solely because of the comics being posted there, then they're making revenue directly from having the comics reposted on their site.

[Fax Celestis]

Revenue from ads are often derived by page hits. If they get large page counts by people solely because of the comics being posted there, then they're making revenue directly from having the comics reposted on their site.

...and they're making said profit at the cost of this site, since it pays for hosting, bandwidth, and server storage.

[Zherog]

Here's a question, probably best suited for RawBear:

I know there's plenty of sites out there that prevent hotlinking to their images. Is that difficult to implement? Would it make sense to tweak the settings here to prevent hotlinking the images?

I don't know how much of the site's bandwidth is sucked up by hotlinked images, but anything's gotta help, right?

[Emperor Tippy]

No idea why GiTP doesn't prevent hotlinking (I would if I was them) but the code is fairly simple.

Zherog, heres an article about stopping it.
http://alistapart.com/articles/hotlinking

[Rawhide]

We thank you for wanting to assist, but we are actually already 10 steps ahead of you.

[Roland St. Jude]

So, I think we've resolved this one. Thread Closed.