Road of Peas

The Middle-Fork post: Light In The Forest 5

This is my most popular hotlinked photograph, and today it started be pulled in from:

1) http://forgetfullypink.proboards55.com/index.cgi?
2) board=hr&action=display&thread=1134872125&page=1

I went there and scanned for the image, but oddly, no image. I removed the filter that blocks my IP from my view of the access log, and reloaded. Hmm, nothing. So I started reading.

Ah ha! There is a link to the image, and the visible text is the URL itself. Very cool. No attributions, but by now you know that’s okay with me. Seeing the URL is attribution in itself.

But I can’t locate any search string, whoever did this knew to pluck the URL from image properties. But the where was the original?

The first IP gives

therobotvegetable@hosting ~ $ host -a 70.187.192.240
Trying “240.192.187.70.in-addr.arpa”
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 49969
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 3, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;240.192.187.70.in-addr.arpa. IN PTR

;; ANSWER SECTION:
240.192.187.70.in-addr.arpa. 86400 IN PTR ip70-187-192-240.dc.dc.cox.net.

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
192.187.70.in-addr.arpa. 86400 IN NS ns.cox.net.
192.187.70.in-addr.arpa. 86400 IN NS ns.east.cox.net.
192.187.70.in-addr.arpa. 86400 IN NS ns.west.cox.net.

Received 150 bytes from 65.197.143.152#53 in 67 ms

Cox.net has a useless front page, but their animation is trying to sell me cable tv and webmail. So again, not much information about the subscriber. That’s cool, I don’t need to know.

I registered and said Hi and thanks! And promptly ran into one of the things that make this whole effort one in which diplomacy is important. Although I say thanks, and said nothing negative, the response seemed to be preloaded with suspicion. I blame the music companies who want to make their customers into criminals, and all those idiots out there who want to destroy fair use.

And now, reading more carefully, someone else in thread said

did you know that its against the law to use a pic with a copyright on it?

This is naive. You don’t need to put the copyright notice on something for it to be copyrighted - you get that automatically. After that, I’m not sure how long it takes after abandoning something to the commons for the copyright to become so dilute that it doesn’t exist. That’s a (minor) part of what I’m up to, but really, I generate tons of good stuff. If I lose something by not saying That’s Mine! that’s okay by me.

So, a big Shout Out to the anonymous person who posted the link! I asked how they found the image, and posted the link to the Light in the Forest archive for their further viewing pleasure.

UPDATE: It doesn’t make sense that they plucked the URL from image properties. If they did that, the image now lives somewhere else, and I wouldn’t be seeing anything my my access log. It’s the dark matter in this universe.

So, they have a connection which rotates among a range of IPs, or they use several connections. Persuing this theory, I find a Google Images search string at 18:16 from 68.224.29.162. The first hotlink occurs at 19:45. That’s time to go eat, or something. Here’s the referring search URL:

1) http://images.google.com/imgres?
2) imgurl=http://www.middle-fork.org/archives/lif5.gif&
3) imgrefurl=http://www.middle-fork.org/archives/2005/01/&
4) h=376&w=600&sz=189&tbnid=WeGGU2TqOQOBWM:&tbnh=83&tbnw=133&
5) hl=en&start=10&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dlight%2Bin%2Bforest%
6) 26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26safe%3Doff%26client%
7) 3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26sa%3DG

The search strings are on line 5 again: light in forest
This is the search results page. It’s on the first page, cool. Houdini’s Big Yawn is buried so deeply I gave up looking.
Here’s what you see after clicking on the thumbnail.

And the IP? It’s another cox.net number.

therobotvegetable@hosting $ host -a 68.224.29.162
Trying “162.29.224.68.in-addr.arpa”
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 48598
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 3, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;162.29.224.68.in-addr.arpa. IN PTR

;; ANSWER SECTION:
162.29.224.68.in-addr.arpa. 70155 IN PTR ip68-224-29-162.lv.lv.cox.net.

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
29.224.68.in-addr.arpa. 70155 IN NS ns.cox.net.
29.224.68.in-addr.arpa. 70155 IN NS ns.east.cox.net.
29.224.68.in-addr.arpa. 70155 IN NS ns.west.cox.net.

Received 148 bytes from 65.197.143.152#53 in 0 ms

Bingo!

UPDATE 18Dec2005: This is the response from the hotlinker in regards to my speculation about why two IPs:

i have no idea what your talking about. i found ALL of my BG images on google.

---

The Middle-Fork post: Houdini’s Big YawnOkay, I’ve got a live one.
This morning shortly after 0600 PDT someone found Houdini’s Big Yawn using Google Images.

Here’s the URL which started it off (I’ve cut the monster up and numbered the lines.)

1) http://images.google.com/imgres?
2) imgurl=http://www.middle-fork.org/archives/HoudinisBigYawn.gif&
3) imgrefurl=http://www.middle-fork.org/archives/2004/11/&h=351&
4) w=600&sz=191&tbnid=viKoXFLogOEJ:&tbnh=77&tbnw=133&hl=en&start=39&
5) prev=/images%3Fq%3Dcat%2Byawn%26start%3D20%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26lr%
6) 3D%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26sa%3DN

The search strings are on line 5: cat yawn
This is the search results page.
This is what you see after clicking on the thumbnail.

Here is where the picture is hotlinked.
It’s part of Eastern US Weather Portal, which, hmm, looks pretty cool. Anything like that for the West?

Anyway, I wll now register an account, noting that their registration page contains some rules, one of which is:

You agree not to post any copyrighted material unless the copyright is owned by you or by this bulletin board.

which is pretty draconian. I consider this fair use, but by these rules, they can’t even use my image with my perrmission - clearly excessive and downright UnAmerican! OMIGAWD!
I better get in there quick and let them know, that for the pittance of a hotlink, I have sold to them the limited right to use this image in this specific context!

Roveg to the Rescue!

Ok, I have resgistered. I try to register as “the Robot Vegetable” everywhere. Some places, like the borg, require 2 names, in which case I am theRobot.

So who is this person who is so kind as to like and use my photograph? What can I discover?

The Pilgrim’s IP is 69.165.108.230. Digging into it results in:

therobotvegetable@hosting ~ $ host -a 69.165.108.230
Trying “230.108.165.69.in-addr.arpa”
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 8250
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 3, ADDITIONAL: 2

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;230.108.165.69.in-addr.arpa. IN PTR

;; ANSWER SECTION:
230.108.165.69.in-addr.arpa. 86389 IN PTR 69-165-108-230.agstme.adelphia.net.

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
108.165.69.in-addr.arpa. 86389 IN NS ns1.adelphia.net.
108.165.69.in-addr.arpa. 86389 IN NS ns2.adelphia.net.
108.165.69.in-addr.arpa. 86389 IN NS ns3.adelphia.net.

;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:
ns1.adelphia.net. 5034 IN A 24.50.78.2
ns2.adelphia.net. 5034 IN A 68.168.224.177

Received 179 bytes from 65.197.143.152#53 in 1 ms

Adelphia.net provides High-Speed Internet connections “in 31 states and Puerto Rico.”

This pretty much means that, without going to extremes which would be invasive I cannot find out anything more about this person.

Prior to the Dark Ages, I would have stopped here, but now I can go say hi.

Well, maybe I can’t. although I was able to go to the page w/ Houdini before, now I can’t. I will post this and then update it later.

UPDATE: IT’s starting to look like a black hole. Even though I’ve registered and logged in, I can’t actually do anything. I keep getting error messages that tell me to login (although the screen displays my status as logged in.) The Adminstrator link is dead. When I email to the address from which my registration letter came, it bounces. When I delete all cookies etc on my browser and try again, the same thing happens. alas.

This is the frustrating part. It’s a $%&^$&*@ forum! Supposedly it’s for people to post and reply. hmm, maybe if I shower and put on some clean clothes?

UPDATE 18Dec2005: I eventually got an email confirming my registration. This is a new thing, usually the first email with a confirmation link which, when clicked on, finishes the registration process. This time, I got the first letter, clciked the URL, and it acted like I was registered, but not this time. Well, live and learn.

Anyway, I’ve now posted my thank you, and people are starting to see the reply.