Majin Planet

Anit-Leech, Do webmasters have a right?

Its a problem has had start a crazy of people to start using scripts called Anti-leech. So what is it? Anti-Leech is a script that stops hot links. Someone desided their going to link right to one of the images on your site. So what happens? Someone visit the leeching site and click to view the image. It could be a on page or in a gallery. When the image is called the anti-leech check to see if it was called from the site or from an out side source. If it was an outside source, it blocks the image from loading all together. Some even send the user to an error page saything this person is leeching their stuff.

Which brings with the big question. So you created a anime fan site or our example a DBZ site. You put together a line of pages full of information. You then put a few 100 images and like some have been doing since 2002 full episodes. Someone want to use your images or clips on their site. Some download them and then upload them to their own server and some even give credit back to the source. Well first off you dont have to give credit back to anyone. Full episodes for download are illegal just like ROMS, music files, and movies.

So to protect themself from leechers many sites have started using these scripts. I’ve seen millions of sites who install them and their reasons every time are this “Dont steal my media!” …. wait did they say their media?

Now dont get me wrong if you make your own movies as it you go out a film them or put up family photos or home movies and you get leecher (why some would in this case) please do what ever you can to stop them. But when it comes to anime images, movie clips featuring anime clips, its not your media and in any case you should not be allowed to stop the leechers. But there is another side to this story no one talks about.

BRANDWIDTH! What is it? In case you dont know — every time you visit a site, the html page, all the images and other media it calls from the server using up space. Lets say a site’s home page is 50K total, that means every time someone visit that page they use up 50K of your brandwidth. Now most sites have a limited ammount of brandwidth. Some have 10GB some have 100GB. What every the case if you have a few 1,000 images and say a million pages of info and get a few 100 visitor per day, your use up maybe about 100 GB a month. But what if you have movie clips, episodes or music videos? Some are 10MB big. Every time someone download one thats 10MB off your brandwidth.

I know some of you are going what the hell is a GB? or MB? OK here is a break down so you get a idea of what its.
1000byes = 1K
1000K = 1MB
1000MB = 1 GB

If you place a link or say you have full episodes for download FREE like most do, your traffic will grow mor ethen you ever hoped for. Reason why they started to do it in the first place. So now your 100GB of brandwitdh usage became 1000GB… but wait you only have 100? Your site shuts down and no one can see it. Some times your’ll looks visitor forever when that happens.

Now some webmasters are samrt here. They know their traffic will grow so they get more brandwidth, most of the time base of traffic from the month before. So you get a 1000GB. But then someone starts linking to your media or images. So know your using double the brandwidth. So what do you do? You install anit-leech.

Is it wrong I belive its wrong to stop people from downloading illegal content when you are doing it. Please let them. But on that same side you shouldnt have to pay for using up your brandwidth because of it. But maybe that the price your paying for doing it?

As of right now 9 out of 10 anime sites have some kind of media they allow people to download. Let it be short clips or full episodes. About 7 out 10 of those sites have full episodes. So whos at fault? The webmaster or the leecher? It can go both ways. On the webmaster side hes losing visitors due to the site being down because he using up to much brandwidth. You can get more brandwidth. But why should you have to pay more? Maybe you should for posting up illegal media. On the leeching site hes being a lazy ass and not going out a downloading the media and then reuploading the media and using his own dam brandwith.

As you can see it goes both way. Most webmasters will say that and install anti-leech scripts on the server. Which is just fine. Its my belive that the full episode problem hasn’t yet blown up. Once it does the Anime companies will crack down and start sewing people, just like what happen to Napster a few years ago and music. Now dont freak out, only the big boys will get the hit. If your some small time site only getting 100 to 500 hits per day dont worry. You wont get sewed. Then again they could be planning their attack on all of them right now and before you know it will be all over the news.

All I have to say to webmaster is if your media is getting leech and its causing too much money to keep the brandwidth then you have a choice you can install a anti-leech program. About 99.9% of the leeching will stop. But dont forget that some of your own visitors will get blocked too. So in that case your’ll lose some visitors. If you do the smart thing and save yourself a long night of installing a anti-leecher and just pull down all the media. Your’ll lose about 60% of your traffic right off the bat. The internet should be met for information, not media. But as the years pass, computers become better and faster more people go to media. So maybe information is a thing of the past now. I just hope that in the future that their a place for us old information base sites.