Update (6/30/04): The sponsor has removed all information from their website.

I have also posted this information to the sticky thread in this same forum:

Update, please read!

I just made some changes to the LS1 Sounds website, and wanted to make everyone aware of them. Due to recent copyright infringements and bandwidth theft from a sponsor of this site that will remain un-named, I have disabled all right-click functions. This means that you will no longer be able to right-click and save the target to your hard drive. If there are any videos that you want to save to your computer for later review, please use your favorite media player to do so. Also, if there is any additional information that I can provide please send me an email at chad@dodds.cc.

For anyone that is wondering, I did contact this sponsor three weeks ago (May 31st, with a follow-up on June 7th) to try and resolve the problem before taking further actions. They did not reply to any of my emails, and they have not removed my information from their site. For now, I just broke the links to my server that they were using and disabled the right-click functions. Hopefully this will convey the message.

 

I looked at the sponsors website a while back and noticed they were linking to your site.

I assumed they either had your permission or you were involved with the sponsor in some form.

I personally think it is truly lame that they did this without your permission and will not be buying anything from them inthe future.

 

Thanks for your support! I'm not sure how long they've had the page up there, but I found out about it a month ago when they sent me their banner. At around the same time I got an email from a good friend of mine asking if I knew about it, so I'm guessing it hasn't been up for much longer than a month or two.

 

In my opinion stuff like that is a given ethically. If a business is willing to blatantly infringe on another property what are they willing to do to their customers? As far as I'm concerned that's a sign saying "we're willing to screw you too".

Just my take on it anyway.

 

I agree! That's kind of the same reason I went to check out their site before just posting their banner on the site, I wanted to make sure that their website at least looked reputable. Even after the fact, I tried communicating with them and working things out mutually but they wouldn't reply even with follow-ups over a three week period.

At this point, I wouldn't put their banner on my site if they removed my info AND paid me (which is something that I have never requested or expected a vendor to do).

 

Were they just using your sounds without your permission?
Or were they directing people to your site?

Seems that if they give you credit and are directing folks to your site, it would just increase exposure to your work... Maybe I am missing something, but I don't see the issue unless they linked to your sounds without giving you credit.

Dave

 

Dave, everything was done without my permission. They copied and pasted entire pages from my site and posted them to a page on their company's website. The information that they copied contained links to all of the video files that are hosted on the ls1sounds.com server. They left the links in place so that anybody who clicked on the links from their site, was just pulling the video from my site. There was no re-direct, and there is no link to www.ls1sounds.com. There was a small mention at the top of the page saying thanks to our friends at ls1sounds (no link), but that was it. They even went so far as to use the images that I have linked on everypage of my site for downloading the appropriate players for all of the media files that I host, and placed them in a similar fashion on their site. At least they actually saved these 4 images to their web server instead of pulling them from ls1sounds.com.

The copying and pasting disappointed me some, but hey the internet is open-source so I didn't get too pissed about that. However, using my server and bandwidth as their own file server is something that I could not allow to continue. Not to mention the fact that some of the files that they had linked up had been removed due to requests from the clip's owner. I have no way of removing the information from their site, so I just broke the links for now.

 

One other thing that I should mention, is that I have never said a thing about people posting links directly to their videos on message boards such as LS1 Tech. ls1sounds.com get's no traffic or recognition from those links, but since it was being done by individuals I had no problem with it. When a business tries to do the same thing in order to improve their sales or the quality of their website without getting permission from the site first and/or compensating the individual who did all of the work, it becomes an entirely different situation.

 

I say way to go too! Bandwidth Theives!!!

Don't know which sponsor, don't care, that's not cool!

Taco, thinking some folks just suck!

 

Right click is only disabled in IE. Might want to post a request for those that use Mozilla, Netscape, etc. who won't even notice you've changed any thing.

 

Well, I was thinking about having the right-click features disabled... It's not going to stop anybody from copying stuff that has even the slightest clue. I think I will restore that soon, it just makes it a pain to save the videos.

Thanks for the support everybody!

 

I say post the sponsorns name. If they were bold enough to do all that and not respond to any of your requests, why should you do the same

 

I am trying to remain the better person in this ordeal... Some people have contacted me via e-mail or the board's PM system asking who the sponsor is, and I replied to them. But for now I choose not to reveal the name of the sponsor, I don't want to attack them publicly and hurt any of LS1tech's revenue sources. This is my favorite LS1 site, and I guess this is my way of supporting it.

I did however browse the sponsor feedback forum and saw some other people who have had bad luck with this company, and also haven't been able to get any response from them. If they continue doing business this way, I can't imagine they will be around much longer.

 

Hey, great explaination.
I just didn't get the whole thing.
That was pretty crappy. Just like you said, it's a big difference between an individual posting a link and a business taking your entire page of links, art, and bandwidth.
Pm info if you don't mind. I don't want to patronize... nuff said.
Dave

 

So is it safe to post direct links here on the board to sound clips? Just wanna make sure so I don't do it anymore

 

No problem at all! I hope I was able to explain the situation from my standpoint well.

PM sent!

 

It's always been fine for individuals to post links to their video clips, so please continue to do so! I'm not sure that the videos will always be allowed to be remote-linked though, as that might change soon. You will know if it does though, because the links won't work if someone clicks on them from a different place than ls1sounds.com.

I am about to start trying to figure out how I can configure the server to only allow links to work from certain domain names. If I can get this to work, I will definitely allow links from ls1tech.com!

 

Well, I re-enabled the right-click menus last night but I'm still looking for a good way to prevent remote-linking. Apache, Frontpage, and .htaccess don't like to agree with each other...

 

Couldn't help but notice the site is marked that all content is copyrighted...


Utter bullsh!t...

 

The sponsor has removed all information from their website. I never did receive a reply from them, but this is reply enough for me! Thanks to everybody for your support.