No more photos on Drudge?
Cory Bergman October 2nd, 2007
I’ve noticed for the past two or three days, Drudge Report has not posted any photos. This could be for a variety of reasons, but I’ve always wondered if he owned the rights to the photos he posted or pulled from another domain. Has something changed? (Of course, now that I’ve posted this, photos will appear any minute now…)
51 Comments Add your own
1. Anonymous | October 2nd, 2007 at 12:57 pm
The photos were always hotlinked, uncredited, and without a link to the source — not even the story links would be to the outlets that hosted the photos. For those who don’t know what hotlinking is, that means the photos were not on Drudge’s servers, Drudge just instructed vistors’ browsers to download the photos from news outlets’ servers instead, so that the news outlets had to pay for all of Drudge’s bandwidth with no reward of traffic or acknowledgment.
2. My Name | October 2nd, 2007 at 1:18 pm
It looks like Drudge got pretty lazy at it, too. Click my name to see a saved copy of September 29th’s Drudge Report, where you can right-click the photos and see their properties — all of them came from Yahoo’s image servers, which Yahoo uses to host photos for Yahoo News, including wire photos from AP, AFP and Knight-Ridder. Anyone with any familiarity with wire services knows that there is no allowed use of wire photos without credit.
For all the years Drudge has done this, with each incident saved forever on sites like Drudge Report Archives and The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, there could be one massive lawsuit coming Drudge’s way. I wouldn’t want to be him.
3. Allen | October 2nd, 2007 at 1:51 pm
I heard him on the radio the other night saying he’s quitting his on air gig. Not sure when though.
4. Rex | October 2nd, 2007 at 2:06 pm
He did that (directly source a photo) to us (MSNBC.com) when we put up the Virginia Tech shooter photos. I briefly considered switching out the sourced photo to an image that said “Drudge moved to Miami for all the free gay sex.” But then I decided I kinda liked my job.
5. Anonymous | October 2nd, 2007 at 2:15 pm
Hahaha, I can think of any number of news photos you could have innocently replaced it with. How were you to know it would mess up Drudge’s site?
6. Michael Gay | October 2nd, 2007 at 3:01 pm
Rex, that’s awesome! I would have loved that screen grab.
7. Steve Safran | October 2nd, 2007 at 3:09 pm
In keeping with this move, I, too, will no longer post photos. Just like the old days.
8. Anonymous | October 2nd, 2007 at 4:27 pm
Hey, I just learned something today:
9. Anonymous | October 2nd, 2007 at 4:28 pm
And…
10. Anonymous | October 2nd, 2007 at 4:29 pm
Oh, I see the problem. Nevermind.
11. Greg | October 2nd, 2007 at 5:30 pm
This practice is common, especially in the blogosphere. However, there’s no solution to this. During the .com era, if you wanted to use a pic, you save the image and host it yourself to save the bandwidth of the person to forward. Now, you link the photo because bandwidth is much higher than it was during the 90’s.
Unfortunately, drudge needs to be careful because I know bloggers that change their photos when the photo has been hotlinked to a graphic image of a dead goat.
12. Brink | October 2nd, 2007 at 5:56 pm
…or something much, much worse.
13. Anonymous | October 2nd, 2007 at 6:46 pm
Drudge can afford the licensing and bandwidth. For someone who rails against taxation as stealing (he “hates it more than anything”), he should be more principled about theft.
14. Anonymous Geek | October 2nd, 2007 at 9:31 pm
Oh there’s a solution….its called .htaccess and the goatse picture.
15. JoeMo | October 3rd, 2007 at 6:39 am
it’s not that difficult to prevent hot-linking, people just are too lazy to do it because they assume that people aren’t stealing their images. You just have to be smart about it, allow them access for x hours or hits then swap with a “for the FULL story please visit wcco.com (for example).
16. Gorman | October 3rd, 2007 at 6:46 am
I’m with #13. It’s one thing for a personal or low-viewed blog to hotlink–heck I actually liked it as long as they provided a link and didn’t copy the entire story–but a site as heavily viewed as his? Shady.
Then again, if the site looks like something straight out of 1997, why shouldn’t we expect late-90’s practices?
17. benny | October 3rd, 2007 at 7:16 am
It’s a copyright issue, all right. Lawsuits are long overdue.
18. drudge | October 3rd, 2007 at 7:19 am
go for it.
i just got my law suit back from the dry cleaners.
19. benny | October 3rd, 2007 at 7:34 am
playing with fire now, dude
20. Gunga | October 3rd, 2007 at 7:43 am
…and nobody noticed this ‘highly illegal and lawsuit worthy practise’ until… Give me a break. The AP has more lawyers than photographers.
Just one thing comes to mind. How many hits are those precious photos getting now that Drudge doesn’t link to them? I hope the AP sues itself into the poor house.
21. Ig | October 3rd, 2007 at 7:52 am
Sounds like you’re all just a) a bit jealous and b) hiding behind your political ideology
22. Show Me the Money | October 3rd, 2007 at 8:02 am
You really think originators of the print and photo work he uses without their permission while operating as a competitive news outlet have never noticed?
23. Gunga | October 3rd, 2007 at 8:04 am
Oh…and Rex…Congratulations! Despite your own loathesome inclinations, self-preservation managed to keep you from committing libel. Or do you have direct knowledge that drudge was participating in gay sex in Miami? Sorry, I forgot that 2 wrongs make a right.
24. Anonymous | October 3rd, 2007 at 8:40 am
Gunga: getting lots of “hits” for a photo doesn’t do any good for someone. It just costs them bandwidth. They get no ad impressions. It’s not like Drudge’s visitors think, “that’s a nice photo, I’ll visit that site.”
Also, this move could be the result of a C&D or even a settlement agreement: not only C&D but don’t do it to anyone else, either.
25. Anonymous Too | October 3rd, 2007 at 8:51 am
It would be news if it’s a ceases & desist or settlement agreement, but I’m not finding a headline on Drudge linking to that breaking story.
26. tdc | October 3rd, 2007 at 8:56 am
anybody who would agree to a “don’t do it to anyone else” needs to get a new lawyer.
27. tdc | October 3rd, 2007 at 8:58 am
btw- i would look for photos to return any day now.
28. Anonymous Too | October 3rd, 2007 at 9:02 am
Ya, tdc, he’s just been even lazier than ususal
29. Anonymous | October 3rd, 2007 at 9:41 am
tdc: Anyone can send a C&D letter, you don’t even have to be a lawyer. If Yahoo or AP or whomever wanted to, they could send a C&D listing a selection of, say, 1000 photos, with a friendly notice of consideration of legal action.
30. Rex | October 3rd, 2007 at 10:25 am
Awesome, I just got accused of libel in this thread. So best.
31. Anonymous | October 3rd, 2007 at 10:48 am
Rex, being gay is a terrible, awful thing. Clearly libelous.
32. Rock | October 3rd, 2007 at 10:53 am
Libel for what? Saying Drudge stole from MSNBC?
33. tdc | October 3rd, 2007 at 10:54 am
NEXT!
any way lr could move the conversation along?
maybe a story about only 500 more days until the shyt hits the fan for broadcast?
34. Rock | October 3rd, 2007 at 11:19 am
Oh this long overdue conversation is moving along quite nicely, thank you, tdc
35. Safran | October 3rd, 2007 at 11:25 am
SO jealous of Rex. I have been writing at LR since 2000 and not once has anyone accused me of libel. He gets the honors in a crappy comments section? Day-um!
36. Playa | October 3rd, 2007 at 11:46 am
Now I’m curious — did something in fact finally happen? After years of C&D letters why would he only now care when he’s always very publicly taken pride in blowing them off before?
37. Gorman | October 3rd, 2007 at 2:04 pm
Are there scripts that can sniff out what domain is requesting an image and in certain cases replace it with another? Anything we can do to expedite libel charges while minimizing man hours seems like a win-win.
38. Amanda | October 3rd, 2007 at 2:45 pm
Gorman, read up on Apache’s htaccess file and what fun things can be done with it.
39. Anonymous | October 3rd, 2007 at 6:41 pm
Is there a way to find out if yimg.com is on an Apache or IIS server?
40. Bonnie | October 3rd, 2007 at 7:18 pm
I’m curious… was this the most clicked story on your site today?
41. Slim | October 4th, 2007 at 3:05 am
Drudge isn’t driving traffic to it and won’t, Bonnie. It’s gossip. Maybe news. At least one other blog picked up on the news aspect of it within hours of its appearance.
42. Boyd | October 4th, 2007 at 4:07 am
Yippee, he’s back to stealing photos. Stop whining it’s not fair. Look at this guy’s business genius.
43. blackcloud | October 4th, 2007 at 5:54 am
True, all he does is rip off others’ work and he makes money doing it.
44. Gunga | October 4th, 2007 at 6:11 am
Or maybe, since the photos are back…everyone was just plain wrong. Dang.
45. Anonymous | October 4th, 2007 at 6:34 am
Drudge-lovers, his site now confirms that his policy has changed. This is no longer about just being “lazier than usual.” He’s now got one small photo on his site, hosted on his own server. Something has caused Drudge to change his practices.
46. Gunga | October 4th, 2007 at 7:15 am
“Matt Drudge - Internet Bandwidth Vampire Strikes Again! AP Helpless! MSNBC VOWS to Stop Him with Claims that He is Gay! (not that there’s anything wrong with that)”
Rex, who accused you of libel? Seems to me that the exact opposite of that was claimed about you. I guess that’s proof positive that you work for MSNBC. I mean, you have no beef with being described as having “loathesome inclinations” (HA!) but choose to brag (falsely) about being accused of having committed libel. I guess that also confirms the “loathesome inclinations” part (as if your previous expression of homophobia wasn’t enough). Bravo, Einstein!
Safran - see the above, you Einstein-by-proxy.
47. Gorman | October 4th, 2007 at 8:20 am
You didn’t do “the exact opposite” of accusing Rex of libel. You basically said his intentions were libelous, his actions were not. I could say “Gunga, despite your inclinations to continue to post flames, your choice not to do so has prevented you from being silly.”
Back to the actual topic, so is he now right-click-saving them to his server? Or is he paying rights?
48. Boyd | October 4th, 2007 at 9:16 am
Oh why would Drudge ever pay for rights to anything? News service headlines, photos? Never has before, claims it’s all free free free free free to use (but credit him with breaking that story, got it)
49. Anonymous | October 4th, 2007 at 12:08 pm
Interesting, he now has two pics he hosts himself, but now has one pic from Knight-Ridder hosted by Yahoo, a companion to an “exclusive” 60 Minutes promotion. If his takedown was the result of a legal threat, it likely wasn’t Yahoo or Knight-Ridder. AP tends to be the most litigious.
As one might say, “DEVELOPING…”
50. Steve Safran | October 5th, 2007 at 1:58 pm
Well now I’m just hurt.
51. Taylor | October 7th, 2007 at 9:58 am
I love how for the past two days he’s had a headline saying “Radiohead Generation Believes Music is Free.”
What on earth difference is there between Matt Drudge and the folks who think they no longer have to pay for music if technology makes it possible to steal it? Worse, he is making money off the work of others. It’s like pirating digital music and then making millions off it.
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