Semper Fi

[unixronin]

(I swear the music was not front-loaded.  The true irony of this musical serendipity didn't become apparent until I previewed my first draft.)

Sailor Jim Johnston linked to this Snopes article about USMC Gunnery Sgt Michael Burghardt, nicknamed "Iron Mike" by his buddies.  Read the story, and you'll understand why they call him that.  I read it, and figured more people needed to see the photo (and to read the story, several months old though it may be).

Snopes.com, however, which got the photo from the Omaha World-Herald, doesn't want anyone else getting it from Snopes in turn -- accredited or otherwise.  So they put a monkeywrencher on it that replaces it, if YOU try to link it in turn from THEM, with a rude face, almost ... gee, almost like it was their copyrighted photo in the first place, and not something they copied from the Omaha World-Herald.

So, yeah, here's the Stars & Stripes article on Iron Mike.  And here's a NON-monkeywrenched copy of the photo.  To Gunny Michael "Iron Mike" Burghardt, a hearty "Semper Fi."  And to Snopes.com ... well, Iron Mike says it all, really.

Hey, Snopes guys?  Iron Mike looks a lot better with his ass hanging out in the breeze than you do.

Comments

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Suppose that the URL for a Snopes image propagates out to, oh, 5,000 average people who then put it in their blogs. As their friends read and refresh said blog pages, suppose each image is downloaded 100 times. That's 500,000 requests for that one image served with no recognition of the server. That number is almost certainly higher for the more amusing pics. The breakdown is likely different for video clips, but I would guess the bandwidth impact is even more severe.

OK, point. Even though the majority of Snopes articles are text-only (or were the last time I was poking around there to any great extent), the kiloword factor does tip the balance disproportionately for a linked image.

And by checking referrers, Snopes can exert pressure on people like you to link to their web page (which I'm sure they encourage) instead of just their copy of the image.

...And which I did. (Usually in such cases I'll make the image a link back to the original article too; in this case, I forgot to do it in the end, being distracted by being pissed off.)

Really, though, if they'd just replaced it with a banner asking people to either link the entire article or make a local copy of the image, I wouldn't have had a problem with that. I just found their particular choice of replacement image, sans any kind of explanation, unnecessarily rude. It's one of those cases where one moment's ill-considered decision can create an unfavorable impression forever.