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discussion about banning external hotlinking

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szilagyi at gmail

Jul 27, 2008, 11:44 PM

Post #1 of 26 (2007 views)
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discussion about banning external hotlinking

Just a heads up that there is a discussion to see if disabling all
"hotlinking" of images and media from external sites is a good idea, here:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:Babel#Proposal_to_disable_hotlinking

Tim Starling posted some statistics that indicate 1% to 2.5% of all requests
are from outside sites leaching WMF bandwidth resources. In theory this
could save the WMF 1% to 2.5% or more of it's bandwidth costs.

- Joe
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swatjester at gmail

Jul 27, 2008, 11:57 PM

Post #2 of 26 (1959 views)
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Re: discussion about banning external hotlinking [In reply to]

I fail to see the benefit of this trade off when compared to the extreme
negative publicity we'd get for it. The 2007 finances report says we spent
approximately $389,000 on internet hosting.
1.5-2% of that is around 6,000 dollars a year.

You couldn't hope to buy off the negative publicity we'd get from this for a
$6,000 a year savings.

-Dan

On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 2:44 AM, Joe Szilagyi <szilagyi [at] gmail> wrote:

> Just a heads up that there is a discussion to see if disabling all
> "hotlinking" of images and media from external sites is a good idea, here:
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:Babel#Proposal_to_disable_hotlinking
>
> Tim Starling posted some statistics that indicate 1% to 2.5% of all
> requests
> are from outside sites leaching WMF bandwidth resources. In theory this
> could save the WMF 1% to 2.5% or more of it's bandwidth costs.
>
> - Joe
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l [at] lists
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
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swatjester at gmail

Jul 27, 2008, 11:59 PM

Post #3 of 26 (1960 views)
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Re: discussion about banning external hotlinking [In reply to]

Correction-- per Tim Starling on Meta, the portion that we pay for (and is
not donated) comes to around $300,000, making the savings much closer to
$3,000-4,000 i.e. even more meaningless.

-Dan

On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 2:57 AM, Dan Rosenthal <swatjester [at] gmail> wrote:

> I fail to see the benefit of this trade off when compared to the extreme
> negative publicity we'd get for it. The 2007 finances report says we spent
> approximately $389,000 on internet hosting.
> 1.5-2% of that is around 6,000 dollars a year.
>
> You couldn't hope to buy off the negative publicity we'd get from this for
> a $6,000 a year savings.
>
> -Dan
>
>
> On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 2:44 AM, Joe Szilagyi <szilagyi [at] gmail> wrote:
>
>> Just a heads up that there is a discussion to see if disabling all
>> "hotlinking" of images and media from external sites is a good idea, here:
>>
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:Babel#Proposal_to_disable_hotlinking
>>
>> Tim Starling posted some statistics that indicate 1% to 2.5% of all
>> requests
>> are from outside sites leaching WMF bandwidth resources. In theory this
>> could save the WMF 1% to 2.5% or more of it's bandwidth costs.
>>
>> - Joe
>> _______________________________________________
>> foundation-l mailing list
>> foundation-l [at] lists
>> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Dan Rosenthal
>

--
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szilagyi at gmail

Jul 28, 2008, 12:01 AM

Post #4 of 26 (1958 views)
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Re: discussion about banning external hotlinking [In reply to]

On Sun, Jul 27, 2008 at 11:57 PM, Dan Rosenthal <swatjester [at] gmail>wrote:

> I fail to see the benefit of this trade off when compared to the extreme
> negative publicity we'd get for it. The 2007 finances report says we spent
> approximately $389,000 on internet hosting.
> 1.5-2% of that is around 6,000 dollars a year.
>
> You couldn't hope to buy off the negative publicity we'd get from this for
> a
> $6,000 a year savings.
>
> -Dan

Agreed. I just saw Tim's numbers on it after mailing out the FYI here. Even
if it topped at 10k, it's not worth it. Maybe in several years of scaling...

- Joe
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swatjester at gmail

Jul 28, 2008, 12:36 AM

Post #5 of 26 (1955 views)
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Re: discussion about banning external hotlinking [In reply to]

Seriously. Also, I just saw the justification for this and about dropped my
jaw.

*"We are not a free image host* - *Money and server power is being wasted on
hosting millions of images for websites that are completely unrelated to the
Wikimedia project. Here is an example of a search for en.WP images that do
not mention Wikipedia,
[10]<http://images.google.com/images?um=1&hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&q=site%3Aupload.wikimedia.org%2Fwikipedia%2Fen+-intitle%3Awikipedia&btnG=Search+Images>over
2 mil. We should not be using our servers for this, as I doubt anyone
donated money with this in mind. Copying of free images is obviously fine,
just as it is with text, but we don't (as far as I know) host the text for
any other site, I don't see why we should do this for image"*

No we are not a free (as in beer) image host, but we do host free (as in
beer and liberty) pictures. The vast majority of these images are not
actually hotlinked anywhere, and take negligible amounts of bandwidth. On
the other hand, by keeping free (as in liberty) images on our servers
(preferably commons) we allow them to be used to benefit future Wikimedia
projects. And the completely irrelevant ones should have some sort of
deletion criteria if they are not being used. I don't see the need to block
hundreds of legitimate sites from hotlinking, and swarm us with negative
publicity for this point.

"*We should not host non-free and fair-use images for anyone to use without
reason* - *Wikipedia hosts many non-free and fair use images for use within
the project, but we can not limit usage of hosted non-free images on other
sites. Ethically and legally is not a good idea to host copyrighted works
for anyone to use with any purpose."*

We don't. Non-free images that are not being used, are supposed to be
deleted. What people do outside of the project is their own concern if our
uses are legitimate; and furthermore it's not within our scope of concern to
be policing external use. Blocking hotlinks is not the solution to this
problem either.

*We bog down Wikipedia with uploads of nonsense photos
*Statistics show that they're less than 2% of bandwidth. $6,000 a year,
tops. Ignoring the blanket statement that the photos are "nonsense" (because
really, who's spent the time to check every one of these millions of photos
and make a qualititative decision on them?) they don't really hurt us.

Now, lets sum up the bad reasons:
1. Miniscule benefit. Implementing technical procedures for miniscule
benefit is usually a bad thing, especially if there are problems and they
don't go well. See below.
2. PR - We are all about getting free content out to people. What kind of
message does it send when we suddenly start restricting that content? The
second this gets picked up on any major news media outlet would be the
second that there is a backlash and petition against the WMF, and we lose
face everytime we say "the sum of all human knowledge" or "bringing free
content to the world" and get the responce "unless it's hotlinked, right?"
Honestly, I wouldn't think it unforeseeable that we'd lose more money in
lost small donations than we gain in saved bandwidth.
3. Hurts potential business agreements with partner organizations. With this
enabled, NOBODY would be able to hotlink images from us. Not Google, One
Laptop Per Child, not anyone. This potentially hurts our ability to make
business deals with partner organizations.
4. Outside our scope. It's simply not our primary, or even secondary concern
what other people do with our content, but rather what we do with our own
content.
5. Hurts legitimate users from reusing our content to say good things about
us.

Some of these concerns may be slightly overstated, but any one of them
outweighs the lack of benefit from enacting this change, and in the
aggregate they completely outweigh it.

-Dan

On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 3:01 AM, Joe Szilagyi <szilagyi [at] gmail> wrote:

> On Sun, Jul 27, 2008 at 11:57 PM, Dan Rosenthal <swatjester [at] gmail
> >wrote:
>
> > I fail to see the benefit of this trade off when compared to the extreme
> > negative publicity we'd get for it. The 2007 finances report says we
> spent
> > approximately $389,000 on internet hosting.
> > 1.5-2% of that is around 6,000 dollars a year.
> >
> > You couldn't hope to buy off the negative publicity we'd get from this
> for
> > a
> > $6,000 a year savings.
> >
> > -Dan
>
>
> Agreed. I just saw Tim's numbers on it after mailing out the FYI here. Even
> if it topped at 10k, it's not worth it. Maybe in several years of
> scaling...
>
> - Joe
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l [at] lists
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
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wiki at konsoletek

Jul 28, 2008, 5:15 AM

Post #6 of 26 (1955 views)
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Re: discussion about banning external hotlinking [In reply to]

Another quick note I wanted to make as to why this would be fairly negative
on the PR. One of the main reasons to be concerned with hot linking is the
fact that people aren't properly attributing the source of where the images
came from. Well if you take a look at the first URL Tim posted in the
thread it is to "tunergarage.blogspot.com". I only looked at their main
page but right now they have 2 images hot linked BUT directly under those
images it says "Image via Wikipedia" and links back to the Common's
description page.

Isn't the wiki moto to "Assume Good Faith"? Does that faith end at the edge
of the Wiki?

-Jon
[[Commons:User:ShakataGaNai]]

On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 12:36 AM, Dan Rosenthal <swatjester [at] gmail>wrote:

> Seriously. Also, I just saw the justification for this and about dropped my
> jaw.
>
> *"We are not a free image host* - *Money and server power is being wasted
> on
> hosting millions of images for websites that are completely unrelated to
> the
> Wikimedia project. Here is an example of a search for en.WP images that do
> not mention Wikipedia,
> [10]<
> http://images.google.com/images?um=1&hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&q=site%3Aupload.wikimedia.org%2Fwikipedia%2Fen+-intitle%3Awikipedia&btnG=Search+Images
> >over
> 2 mil. We should not be using our servers for this, as I doubt anyone
> donated money with this in mind. Copying of free images is obviously fine,
> just as it is with text, but we don't (as far as I know) host the text for
> any other site, I don't see why we should do this for image"*
>
> No we are not a free (as in beer) image host, but we do host free (as in
> beer and liberty) pictures. The vast majority of these images are not
> actually hotlinked anywhere, and take negligible amounts of bandwidth. On
> the other hand, by keeping free (as in liberty) images on our servers
> (preferably commons) we allow them to be used to benefit future Wikimedia
> projects. And the completely irrelevant ones should have some sort of
> deletion criteria if they are not being used. I don't see the need to block
> hundreds of legitimate sites from hotlinking, and swarm us with negative
> publicity for this point.
>
> "*We should not host non-free and fair-use images for anyone to use without
> reason* - *Wikipedia hosts many non-free and fair use images for use within
> the project, but we can not limit usage of hosted non-free images on other
> sites. Ethically and legally is not a good idea to host copyrighted works
> for anyone to use with any purpose."*
>
> We don't. Non-free images that are not being used, are supposed to be
> deleted. What people do outside of the project is their own concern if our
> uses are legitimate; and furthermore it's not within our scope of concern
> to
> be policing external use. Blocking hotlinks is not the solution to this
> problem either.
>
> *We bog down Wikipedia with uploads of nonsense photos
> *Statistics show that they're less than 2% of bandwidth. $6,000 a year,
> tops. Ignoring the blanket statement that the photos are "nonsense"
> (because
> really, who's spent the time to check every one of these millions of photos
> and make a qualititative decision on them?) they don't really hurt us.
>
> Now, lets sum up the bad reasons:
> 1. Miniscule benefit. Implementing technical procedures for miniscule
> benefit is usually a bad thing, especially if there are problems and they
> don't go well. See below.
> 2. PR - We are all about getting free content out to people. What kind of
> message does it send when we suddenly start restricting that content? The
> second this gets picked up on any major news media outlet would be the
> second that there is a backlash and petition against the WMF, and we lose
> face everytime we say "the sum of all human knowledge" or "bringing free
> content to the world" and get the responce "unless it's hotlinked, right?"
> Honestly, I wouldn't think it unforeseeable that we'd lose more money in
> lost small donations than we gain in saved bandwidth.
> 3. Hurts potential business agreements with partner organizations. With
> this
> enabled, NOBODY would be able to hotlink images from us. Not Google, One
> Laptop Per Child, not anyone. This potentially hurts our ability to make
> business deals with partner organizations.
> 4. Outside our scope. It's simply not our primary, or even secondary
> concern
> what other people do with our content, but rather what we do with our own
> content.
> 5. Hurts legitimate users from reusing our content to say good things about
> us.
>
> Some of these concerns may be slightly overstated, but any one of them
> outweighs the lack of benefit from enacting this change, and in the
> aggregate they completely outweigh it.
>
> -Dan
>
> On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 3:01 AM, Joe Szilagyi <szilagyi [at] gmail> wrote:
>
> > On Sun, Jul 27, 2008 at 11:57 PM, Dan Rosenthal <swatjester [at] gmail
> > >wrote:
> >
> > > I fail to see the benefit of this trade off when compared to the
> extreme
> > > negative publicity we'd get for it. The 2007 finances report says we
> > spent
> > > approximately $389,000 on internet hosting.
> > > 1.5-2% of that is around 6,000 dollars a year.
> > >
> > > You couldn't hope to buy off the negative publicity we'd get from this
> > for
> > > a
> > > $6,000 a year savings.
> > >
> > > -Dan
> >
> >
> > Agreed. I just saw Tim's numbers on it after mailing out the FYI here.
> Even
> > if it topped at 10k, it's not worth it. Maybe in several years of
> > scaling...
> >
> > - Joe
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l [at] lists
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Dan Rosenthal
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l [at] lists
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
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Simetrical+wikilist at gmail

Jul 28, 2008, 8:22 AM

Post #7 of 26 (1952 views)
Permalink

Re: discussion about banning external hotlinking [In reply to]

This proposal is completely wrong-headed. Wikimedia's goal is to
provide free information, to everyone. If it can do this helpfully
and at reasonable cost by providing free image hotlinking of images it
happens to have anyway, it should do so. As for arguments about
costing Wikimedia money, please see
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Don%27t_worry_about_performance>.
If the sysadmins think it's a problem they'll handle it, and it's
not.

If some of the images people are hot-linking are non-free, it's up to
the ones hotlinking them to determine whether their particular use
meets the requirements of fair use -- Wikimedia need not police
third-party use of its resources unless there's a complaint. Others
have a right to use copyrighted works under fair use, and Wikimedia
should not stand in their way. And if people are uploading images
that are useless to us so they can hotlink them (which I haven't heard
is a big problem), just delete the images.

There's no need for selfishness here. Wikimedia's goal is advanced
about as much if third-party sites can use its information directly as
if they have to direct people to Wikimedia's sites to get it. The
point is to disseminate the information, not to disseminate it with a
Wikimedia-owned logo in the top left corner of the page.

Essentially the same arguments apply to watermarking and other overly
protective measures. The status quo is perfectly fine with respect to
third-party use of Wikimedia images. I've hotlinked Wikimedia images
myself on more than one occasion.

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gmaxwell at gmail

Jul 28, 2008, 8:32 AM

Post #8 of 26 (1952 views)
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Re: discussion about banning external hotlinking [In reply to]

On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 11:22 AM, Simetrical
<Simetrical+wikilist [at] gmail> wrote:
[snip]
> Essentially the same arguments apply to watermarking and other overly
> protective measures. The status quo is perfectly fine with respect to
> third-party use of Wikimedia images. I've hotlinked Wikimedia images
> myself on more than one occasion.

Although, as it stands right now we're really encouraging unattributed
use. ... Our thumbnailing even strips EXIF copyright information. :(

I strongly suspect that an overwhelming majority of the hotlinkers are
not following the rules. If we can't get that turned around then we
*should* disable hotlinking because leaving it there is an attractive
nuisance which is both disrespectful to our contributors, and
potentially bad for PR (imagine if some Wikimedia contributors start
aggressively DMCA noticing hotlinkers who don't provide attribution).

But ... I don't think we should limit hotlinking.

Rather, I think we should encourage it... but we should encourage
doing it right by promoting extensions that provide links back to the
image pages, and by having mediawiki provide example HTML copy and
past which does the right thing. (and we should also stop stripping
most of the Exif, and also append in the image page data into the
exif).

Mangus had a JS example of the former for commons that was pretty spiffy.

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Simetrical+wikilist at gmail

Jul 28, 2008, 9:12 AM

Post #9 of 26 (1956 views)
Permalink

Re: discussion about banning external hotlinking [In reply to]

On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 11:32 AM, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell [at] gmail> wrote:
> Although, as it stands right now we're really encouraging unattributed
> use. ... Our thumbnailing even strips EXIF copyright information. :(

Well, that at least could probably be fixed easily enough. Of course,
even if they just hotlink the thumbnail with no comment, you can still
look at the URL and track down its contributors, if you know how.
Rather like how in Wikipedia articles, the images are used without
clear attribution, and you have to know to click the image to track
down the contributors . . . although there's a difference of degree
here, it's true.

> I strongly suspect that an overwhelming majority of the hotlinkers are
> not following the rules. If we can't get that turned around then we
> *should* disable hotlinking because leaving it there is an attractive
> nuisance which is both disrespectful to our contributors, and
> potentially bad for PR (imagine if some Wikimedia contributors start
> aggressively DMCA noticing hotlinkers who don't provide attribution).

Which is kind of like saying that if an overwhelming majority of
third-party reusers of Wikipedia dumps are not following the rules, we
should stop providing the dumps. Wikimedia needs to stay within what
is legal and moral itself. It doesn't need to punish legitimate
reusers because of a majority's illegal or immoral actions. If
contributors want to DMCA hotlinkers who don't provide attribution,
that sounds like a good idea to me.

> But ... I don't think we should limit hotlinking.
>
> Rather, I think we should encourage it... but we should encourage
> doing it right by promoting extensions that provide links back to the
> image pages, and by having mediawiki provide example HTML copy and
> past which does the right thing.

Now there's a good idea. Every other image-upload software package
does that. Let me see if I can't code that up right now.

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gmaxwell at gmail

Jul 28, 2008, 9:20 AM

Post #10 of 26 (1951 views)
Permalink

Re: discussion about banning external hotlinking [In reply to]

On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 12:12 PM, Simetrical
<Simetrical+wikilist [at] gmail> wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 11:32 AM, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell [at] gmail> wrote:
>> Although, as it stands right now we're really encouraging unattributed
>> use. ... Our thumbnailing even strips EXIF copyright information. :(
>
> Well, that at least could probably be fixed easily enough. Of course,
> even if they just hotlink the thumbnail with no comment, you can still
> look at the URL and track down its contributors, if you know how.
> Rather like how in Wikipedia articles, the images are used without
> clear attribution, and you have to know to click the image to track
> down the contributors . . . although there's a difference of degree
> here, it's true.

One click vs.. I don't agree that it's at all comparable
.

> Which is kind of like saying that if an overwhelming majority of
> third-party reusers of Wikipedia dumps are not following the rules, we
> should stop providing the dumps. Wikimedia needs to stay within what
> is legal and moral itself. It doesn't need to punish legitimate
> reusers because of a majority's illegal or immoral actions. If
> contributors want to DMCA hotlinkers who don't provide attribution,
> that sounds like a good idea to me.

But see in the hotlinking case we're an active participant. It
doesn't continue without our help. Besides, as I pointed out.. there
are clear actions which we can take to mitigate the harm: good linking
instructions, offering extensions to popular blogging platforms, and
preserving/filling out image metadata. We can do these things, I
don't think anyone would disagree that they'd help a lot.. and since
we're an active (and now knowing) participant to the bad behaviour I'd
argue that we must.

>> But ... I don't think we should limit hotlinking.
>>
>> Rather, I think we should encourage it... but we should encourage
>> doing it right by promoting extensions that provide links back to the
>> image pages, and by having mediawiki provide example HTML copy and
>> past which does the right thing.
>
> Now there's a good idea. Every other image-upload software package
> does that. Let me see if I can't code that up right now.

Cool. 'nuff. You might want to hunt down mangus little JS example. I
can't find it at the moment, but the user interface was pretty
reasonable as I recall.

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shimgray at gmail

Jul 28, 2008, 9:32 AM

Post #11 of 26 (1954 views)
Permalink

Re: discussion about banning external hotlinking [In reply to]

2008/7/28 Simetrical <Simetrical+wikilist [at] gmail>:

> Well, that at least could probably be fixed easily enough. Of course,
> even if they just hotlink the thumbnail with no comment, you can still
> look at the URL and track down its contributors, if you know how.

It's doable, but it's a real hassle and requires you to know the
Secret Naming Conventions to handle it. I certainly wouldn't expect
most experienced mediawiki users to know how to do it without
experimentation, much less the average user trying to figure out the
source of an image...

--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray [at] dunelm

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Jul 28, 2008, 11:19 AM

Post #12 of 26 (1945 views)
Permalink

Re: discussion about banning external hotlinking [In reply to]

On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 12:20 PM, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell [at] gmail> wrote:
> One click vs.. I don't agree that it's at all comparable

Well, in neither case is it obvious that the credits are even
available at all, and I think that's the important similarity. But
that's neither here nor there. If we're okay with the image merely
linking to the image page on Wikipedia, it should be okay for hotlinks
too.

(Why are the links not something simple anyway, again, like
<http://commons.wikimedia.org/thumb/Image:ImageName.png/800x600>?
That would *almost* allow replacing "thumb" with "wiki" to get the
image page . . . there's no reason to have it retrieve directly from
the filesystem, when everything is cached by Squid anyway.)

> But see in the hotlinking case we're an active participant. It
> doesn't continue without our help.

You mean, it doesn't continue if we decide to actively (possibly at a
hit to performance) go out of our way to try to filter out those
images. And even then it still probably continues, just people have
to reupload it somewhere -- without *any* ability for the interested
viewer to track where it's from, tech-savvy or not.

> Besides, as I pointed out.. there
> are clear actions which we can take to mitigate the harm: good linking
> instructions, offering extensions to popular blogging platforms, and
> preserving/filling out image metadata.

That I agree with. :)

> Cool. 'nuff. You might want to hunt down mangus little JS example. I
> can't find it at the moment, but the user interface was pretty
> reasonable as I recall.

Is there any problem with something that just looks like Flickr?
Actually, I don't see any interface for this on Flickr -- say
ImageShack, then?

Where should the instructions be put, right under the image?

Do we have agreement that we actually want this? It's rather a big
leap in the opposite direction from the OP. :)

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shimgray at gmail

Jul 28, 2008, 11:27 AM

Post #13 of 26 (1944 views)
Permalink

Re: discussion about banning external hotlinking [In reply to]

2008/7/28 Simetrical <Simetrical+wikilist [at] gmail>:

>> Cool. 'nuff. You might want to hunt down mangus little JS example. I
>> can't find it at the moment, but the user interface was pretty
>> reasonable as I recall.
>
> Is there any problem with something that just looks like Flickr?
> Actually, I don't see any interface for this on Flickr -- say
> ImageShack, then?

Magnifying glass button, above image, top right. Only appears if other
sizes of the image are available & the user's permissions permit it.

--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray [at] dunelm

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gmaxwell at gmail

Jul 28, 2008, 11:32 AM

Post #14 of 26 (1945 views)
Permalink

Re: discussion about banning external hotlinking [In reply to]

On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 2:19 PM, Simetrical
<Simetrical+wikilist [at] gmail> wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 12:20 PM, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell [at] gmail> wrote:
>> One click vs.. I don't agree that it's at all comparable
>
> Well, in neither case is it obvious that the credits are even
> available at all, and I think that's the important similarity. But
> that's neither here nor there. If we're okay with the image merely
> linking to the image page on Wikipedia, it should be okay for hotlinks
> too.

I'm not sure we can have a reasonable discussion on this point. So
I'll drop it for now.

[snip]
> You mean, it doesn't continue if we decide to actively (possibly at a
> hit to performance) go out of our way to try to filter out those
> images. And even then it still probably continues, just people have
> to reupload it somewhere -- without *any* ability for the interested
> viewer to track where it's from, tech-savvy or not.

Possibly at a hit to performance. Come now. The CPU on the squids are
loafing, applying a couple of regexpes to allow some specific sites
would not be a hit worth mentioning. (and if it is, it would just be
something else to fix in squid...)

So don't feed me that crap. ;) Besides, as I pointed out.. I'd rather
not disable it.

>> Cool. 'nuff. You might want to hunt down mangus little JS example. I
>> can't find it at the moment, but the user interface was pretty
>> reasonable as I recall.
>
> Is there any problem with something that just looks like Flickr?
> Actually, I don't see any interface for this on Flickr -- say
> ImageShack, then?
>
> Where should the instructions be put, right under the image?
>
> Do we have agreement that we actually want this? It's rather a big
> leap in the opposite direction from the OP. :)

This was the JS hack I was talking about:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:African_penguins.jpg?withJS=MediaWiki:ChooseResolution.js
(helps to spell Magnus' name right!)

Looks like it's not working quite right anymore. The 'use on your
webpage' link popped up a box with HTML that you could copy and paste.
I think the flickr style size links on top is preferable ... less
likely to get missed.

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Simetrical+wikilist at gmail

Jul 28, 2008, 11:37 AM

Post #15 of 26 (1945 views)
Permalink

Re: discussion about banning external hotlinking [In reply to]

On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 2:32 PM, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell [at] gmail> wrote:
> I think the flickr style size links on top is preferable ... less
> likely to get missed.

I don't actually see anywhere to copy and paste HTML to hotlink images
from Flickr. I only see a download link, and that only after clicking
a tiny and easily-missed "All Sizes" link just above the image. Does
the HTML only appear on some images?

If we're talking about likelihood of getting missed, ImageShack's
approach sure seems to be pretty noticeable:

http://img519.imageshack.us/my.php?image=picture1sp3.png

But that uses a lot of screen real estate.

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gmaxwell at gmail

Jul 28, 2008, 11:45 AM

Post #16 of 26 (1946 views)
Permalink

Re: discussion about banning external hotlinking [In reply to]

On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 2:37 PM, Simetrical
<Simetrical+wikilist [at] gmail> wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 2:32 PM, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell [at] gmail> wrote:
>> I think the flickr style size links on top is preferable ... less
>> likely to get missed.
>
> I don't actually see anywhere to copy and paste HTML to hotlink images
> from Flickr. I only see a download link, and that only after clicking
> a tiny and easily-missed "All Sizes" link just above the image. Does
> the HTML only appear on some images?
>
> If we're talking about likelihood of getting missed, ImageShack's
> approach sure seems to be pretty noticeable:
>
> http://img519.imageshack.us/my.php?image=picture1sp3.png
>
> But that uses a lot of screen real estate.

I'd prefer something at the top which, when clicked, brings up a page
with stuff like your imageshack example.

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shimgray at gmail

Jul 28, 2008, 11:46 AM

Post #17 of 26 (1944 views)
Permalink

Re: discussion about banning external hotlinking [In reply to]

2008/7/28 Simetrical <Simetrical+wikilist [at] gmail>:
> On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 2:32 PM, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell [at] gmail> wrote:
>> I think the flickr style size links on top is preferable ... less
>> likely to get missed.
>
> I don't actually see anywhere to copy and paste HTML to hotlink images
> from Flickr. I only see a download link, and that only after clicking
> a tiny and easily-missed "All Sizes" link just above the image. Does
> the HTML only appear on some images?

It appears underneath the image when you've gone through to "all
sizes". It's there for all images with CC-* permissions, and - I think
- authors can set it to be visible even for all-rights-reserved images
in their own preferences.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/shimgray/2710860588/ is the last image I
uploaded (don't worry, it wasn't all mine...) and "all sizes" will
give you: http://www.flickr.com/photos/shimgray/2710860588/sizes/m/ a
download link, then the image, then underneath that the raw image URL
and a set of preformed HTML.

--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray [at] dunelm

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Simetrical+wikilist at gmail

Jul 28, 2008, 12:03 PM

Post #18 of 26 (1951 views)
Permalink

Re: discussion about banning external hotlinking [In reply to]

On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 2:46 PM, Andrew Gray <shimgray [at] gmail> wrote:
> It appears underneath the image when you've gone through to "all
> sizes". It's there for all images with CC-* permissions, and - I think
> - authors can set it to be visible even for all-rights-reserved images
> in their own preferences.
>
> http://www.flickr.com/photos/shimgray/2710860588/ is the last image I
> uploaded (don't worry, it wasn't all mine...) and "all sizes" will
> give you: http://www.flickr.com/photos/shimgray/2710860588/sizes/m/ a
> download link, then the image, then underneath that the raw image URL
> and a set of preformed HTML.

This is what I see:

http://www.twcenter.net/~simetrical/Flickr_no_controls.png

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andrew.gray at dunelm

Jul 28, 2008, 12:19 PM

Post #19 of 26 (1945 views)
Permalink

Re: discussion about banning external hotlinking [In reply to]

2008/7/28 Simetrical <Simetrical+wikilist [at] gmail>:
> On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 2:46 PM, Andrew Gray <shimgray [at] gmail> wrote:
>> It appears underneath the image when you've gone through to "all
>> sizes". It's there for all images with CC-* permissions, and - I think
>> - authors can set it to be visible even for all-rights-reserved images
>> in their own preferences.
>>
>> http://www.flickr.com/photos/shimgray/2710860588/ is the last image I
>> uploaded (don't worry, it wasn't all mine...) and "all sizes" will
>> give you: http://www.flickr.com/photos/shimgray/2710860588/sizes/m/ a
>> download link, then the image, then underneath that the raw image URL
>> and a set of preformed HTML.
>
> This is what I see:
>
> http://www.twcenter.net/~simetrical/Flickr_no_controls.png

Eeeenteresting. What I had *thought* you'd be seeing is:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/shimgray/2711466964/

I suppose I should try logging out once in a while.

--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray [at] dunelm

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erik at wikimedia

Jul 28, 2008, 12:52 PM

Post #20 of 26 (1943 views)
Permalink

Re: discussion about banning external hotlinking [In reply to]

2008/7/28 Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell [at] gmail>:
> Rather, I think we should encourage it... but we should encourage
> doing it right by promoting extensions that provide links back to the
> image pages, and by having mediawiki provide example HTML copy and
> past which does the right thing.

A lot of copy & pasting does include links to the image description
page on our servers, which I agree should be good enough for third
parties if it's good enough for us. But I like the idea of easy HTML
snippets for embedding.

What I'd also love to see is a reference implementation in MediaWiki
of what we consider the ideal use scenario of free media from Commons
in third party wikis: searching an image, embedding it, and making the
metadata accessible. With the recently added foreign file repository
support, any MediaWiki installation can now easily access images from
Commons. It seems like the next logical step would be a cross-wiki
search interface, perhaps similar to the one that Wikia has designed
for its image search.

We could then encourage makers of other content management systems to
implement a similar mechanism to add free media to content.

The best way to get people to do the right thing is to make it easier
than doing the wrong thing. ;-) Fortunately, downloading and
re-uploading an image into a CMS is more effort than having a direct
web interface to acquire it, which should theoretically make it
possible to pass along any metadata whenever the image is used.
--
Erik M�ller
Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation

Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate

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vacuum at jeb

Jul 28, 2008, 2:26 PM

Post #21 of 26 (1945 views)
Permalink

Re: discussion about banning external hotlinking [In reply to]

There has been some discussions with people within newspapers, archives and libraries in Norway to create some sort of common metadata standard so it can be harvested by Mediawiki. Especially to build "smart" reference tags, and to track news article that are on the move to a permanent newspaper archive. It seems like the "standard" will be something like Dublin Core, and some fall back solutions...

John (one of the persons..)

>2008/7/28 Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell [at] gmail>:
>> Rather, I think we should encourage it... but we should encourage
>> doing it right by promoting extensions that provide links back to the
>> image pages, and by having mediawiki provide example HTML copy and
>> past which does the right thing.
>
>A lot of copy & pasting does include links to the image description
>page on our servers, which I agree should be good enough for third
>parties if it's good enough for us. But I like the idea of easy HTML
>snippets for embedding.
>
>What I'd also love to see is a reference implementation in MediaWiki
>of what we consider the ideal use scenario of free media from Commons
>in third party wikis: searching an image, embedding it, and making the
>metadata accessible. With the recently added foreign file repository
>support, any MediaWiki installation can now easily access images from
>Commons. It seems like the next logical step would be a cross-wiki
>search interface, perhaps similar to the one that Wikia has designed
>for its image search.
>
>We could then encourage makers of other content management systems to
>implement a similar mechanism to add free media to content.
>
>The best way to get people to do the right thing is to make it easier
>than doing the wrong thing. ;-) Fortunately, downloading and
>re-uploading an image into a CMS is more effort than having a direct
>web interface to acquire it, which should theoretically make it
>possible to pass along any metadata whenever the image is used.
>--
>Erik M�ller
>Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation
>
>Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
>
>_______________________________________________
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innocentkiller at gmail

Jul 28, 2008, 3:18 PM

Post #22 of 26 (1944 views)
Permalink

Re: discussion about banning external hotlinking [In reply to]

On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 3:52 PM, Erik Moeller <erik [at] wikimedia> wrote:
[snip]
> What I'd also love to see is a reference implementation in MediaWiki
> of what we consider the ideal use scenario of free media from Commons
> in third party wikis: searching an image, embedding it, and making the
> metadata accessible. With the recently added foreign file repository
> support, any MediaWiki installation can now easily access images from
> Commons. It seems like the next logical step would be a cross-wiki
> search interface, perhaps similar to the one that Wikia has designed
> for its image search.
>

I agree. The old idea of InstantCommons (oldest idea short of SUL, and now
that's done :-) has been on my mind recently, so that's why I've been doing
work with Brion in regards to the ForeignApiRepo code. While not as polished
yet as I'd like, it's definitely coming along nicely. Hopefully we can
get it ironed
out before 1.14 is out, so we can ship MediaWiki with InstantCommons as an
advertised feature.

Not to mention, it's designed to hook into _any_ MediaWiki install, enabling
the sharing of images and other media between other wikis than just
commons.

> We could then encourage makers of other content management systems to
> implement a similar mechanism to add free media to content.
>

I would love to see Drupal, phpNuke, Wordpress, and other blogging/CMS
platforms be able to use the MW api to use freely licensed media.

-Chad

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brianna.laugher at gmail

Jul 28, 2008, 9:45 PM

Post #23 of 26 (1929 views)
Permalink

Re: discussion about banning external hotlinking [In reply to]

2008/7/29 Simetrical <Simetrical+wikilist [at] gmail>:
> Is there any problem with something that just looks like Flickr?
> Actually, I don't see any interface for this on Flickr -- say
> ImageShack, then?
>
> Where should the instructions be put, right under the image?
>
> Do we have agreement that we actually want this? It's rather a big
> leap in the opposite direction from the OP. :)

YES! Great idea. Please give it API stuff too.

Brianna

--
They've just been waiting in a mountain for the right moment:
http://modernthings.org/

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mboverloadlister at gmail

Jul 28, 2008, 11:51 PM

Post #24 of 26 (1926 views)
Permalink

Re: discussion about banning external hotlinking [In reply to]

Just a quick note -

I used to be part of a group that would post large pictures on the
internet. We were always taking hits because of imgshack, photobucket, etc
taking down our images because of too much bandwidth use. However, these
images would not be allowed on the commons or Wikipedia anyway.

I think we need to make it clear what can and can not be uploaded and
promptly delete anything that doesn't fit those guidelines. This eliminates
almost all "image hosting". The rest is so small as to be meaningless.

mboverload

On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 9:45 PM, Brianna Laugher
<brianna.laugher [at] gmail>wrote:

> 2008/7/29 Simetrical <Simetrical+wikilist [at] gmail<Simetrical%2Bwikilist [at] gmail>
> >:
> > Is there any problem with something that just looks like Flickr?
> > Actually, I don't see any interface for this on Flickr -- say
> > ImageShack, then?
> >
> > Where should the instructions be put, right under the image?
> >
> > Do we have agreement that we actually want this? It's rather a big
> > leap in the opposite direction from the OP. :)
>
> YES! Great idea. Please give it API stuff too.
>
> Brianna
>
> --
> They've just been waiting in a mountain for the right moment:
> http://modernthings.org/
>
> _______________________________________________
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>
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Simetrical+wikilist at gmail

Jul 29, 2008, 7:16 AM

Post #25 of 26 (1920 views)
Permalink

Re: discussion about banning external hotlinking [In reply to]

On Tue, Jul 29, 2008 at 12:45 AM, Brianna Laugher
<brianna.laugher [at] gmail> wrote:
> YES! Great idea. Please give it API stuff too.

What API stuff?

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