Visitor Content
I used to have adoptions, wallpaper, downloads, fonts, and lots of other fun things for the visitor. This stuff, known as “visitor content” is stupid. I mean, what is the point? This site is not about you. It’s about me. And I have plenty of pixels. I can draw them. Since this is my site, and it’s about me, why should I cater to you? Shouldn’t you be the one catering to me? After all, I paid for this domain. I’m the one doing the work. You just happened to stumble across this site somehow. So let’s be rational: what’s so wrong with visitor content?
1. People steal. Everyone who has freebies on their site (adoptions, toybox pixels, wallpapers, etc.) has a little disclaimer saying “Don’t edit, don’t steal, link back, blah blah blah.” Well, don’t you remember when you just found the internet? Those disclaimers did a whole lot to stop you from right-clicking and taking those images. They’re cute, right? Why can’t I take them and put them on my website, too?
2. Direct-linkage. A part of said disclaimer is “Do not direct-link. Upload to your own server.” Well, most people either don’t know what direct link means or don’t care. So now they’re eating your bandwidth. Which costs you money. Because they’re ignorant. Or jerks.
3. It’s all the same. If you rounded up all the visitor content from personal sites around the web, do you know what you would find? A whole lot of the same stuff. Lots of pixel adoptions, some of them really good, some of them really bad. So bad you wonder why anyone would display them. You know what else there would be? Sloppy wallpapers or header images, some bullets and little icons, too. But they’re all the same. Now don’t get me wrong; in the midst of all the junk, you can find some good quality content. But how much? Not enough.
4. Copyright infringement I’m guilty of this, too. Taking images and characters that are property of someone else and making other images out of them. That’s illegal. Pixelling a copyright character, such as Pucca or even Fry and Bender, and distributing it as your own original work, that’s copyright infringement. I’m not going to get into all the dirty details of what you can and can’t do with copyright characters, but this harmless visitor content could cause you to go to jail if you’re not careful.
I haven’t decided if there will be more to this article or not so this is the end for now.
