Bandwidth Theft is a Crime!

I find this just a little bit hard to believe. But to give you the benefit of the doubt - I will explain it very carefully for you.

Bandwidth theft is when you steal my bandwidth by directly connecting to an image on my website. Thus my webspace provider will serve that image up on your website when it is displayed - rather than your webserver providing the bandwidth to show the image.

It isn't easy to do, so I find it hard to believe someone does it accidentally. You see, the correct way to use a clipart image is to right click on it, save it to your computer, then upload it to your website provider or your webspace. In order to direct link to an image on my website you have to FIRST go to "view" on your Internet Explorer (or other program) and do a "View Source". Then you have to go through all the coding on my page and figure out what the link is to the image, for instance something like this: <*img src="blahblahblah.jpg"*> (* are in so you can see the code in your browser - just ignore them). Then you have to copy that coding and put that in your webpage. Pretty hard to think that you "accidentally" went to all that trouble, isn't it?

Normally what has happened is one of your little friends taught you to do this and told you A)you'll never get caught, and B)it doesn't hurt anyone, or only hurts some big business who can afford it.

I am not a big business. Most months I do not even make a profit by sharing my artwork with you. When someone direct links to my images it does show up in my stats, I do notice, and I will report you to the proper authorities. If you are a minor, your parents will be responsible to pay any fines that result. They'll love that, won't they?

But this is what I really want you to think about.

If I were not an artist - if instead I was...say a motorcycle engineer-

And I went out and I bought steel, and fiberglass, and a big expensive lathe to make parts on, and a welding torch and all that other equipment with my own money -

Then I spent all day long making motorcycle parts, bending frames, fabricating gas tanks and fenders -

And at the end of the day, you came running into my shop and you grabbed all the parts, gas tanks, frames, and fenders you could hold -

Then ran outside and gave those motorcycle parts away to all your friends -

I pay for my bandwidth. I buy graphics programs and computer equipment and art supplies and spend my days doing artwork. Stealing from me is just as much stealing as it would be if I were making motorcycle parts and you stole them.