I've been lurking around a couple new forums on the internet, and ran across a bunch of folks complaining about users swiping their bandwidth.

These weren't corporate execs. Just folks trying to make a buck selling stuff on the internet, and complaining about their server bills.

And about other folks swiping their stuff. Their gifs and links and html.

This was just idle curiosity to me, since I sell nothing on the internet (hey, wanna buy some old sage grouse tail feathers? cheap? Just let me wash some of the blood and eagle shit offa them first...).

OK, I sold some magic cards on ebay as an experiment. And made money. But concluded the hassles weren't worth it.

Anyway, I have been a great one for stealing folks' gifs off websites. I love backgrounds, and I don't know why. Take any good symmetric photo, start changing colors and contrast, and you can get lots of neat stuff. (Like the really enthralling background I use here... anybody else tired of yellow yet?)

But I never figured I was a bandwidth thief, until I thought about my two links to the livecams at Pikes Peak and the Eiffel Tower. I hate having to wait for all the banners and gifs for the two home sites to load, so I just bookmark straight to the cameras. And those were the links I put on this page.

You leave a magazine on the table, don't get mad at me if I read the articles and look at the pictures but ignore the ads (I do). Just a good survival tactic on my part, and poor ad design on yours.

But clipping out the articles and offering them to someone else without the ads? That's a different story. Yes, you can make a good argument that that is theft of someone's property. Or at least parasitic.

So I just fixed the links...they're still good sites, but now you can see who puts them online for us all to share.