Why can I no longer post Mike Thompson toons?

[Bozita]

For the last week or so, Thompson's toons post here at DU only as a link. WTF?

http://cmsimg.freep.com/apps/pbcsi.dll/bilde?Site=C4&Date=20051205&Category=COL25&ArtNo=51202017&Ref=AR&Profile=1106&MaxW=600

[Neil Lisst]

1. It appears he wants the traffic to come to him.

I can appreciate that. When I post the IMAGE of our cartoon here, it is a pageview of the cartoon, but it is not a visit to the site.

If a site is trying to increase its traffic at the site, it might discontinue coding to allow others to broadcast the cartoon. They figure readers will follow a link, it's a click away.

He gets more credit with advertisers for viewers who come there to read. I don't know what his deal is with advertisers. We don't have any on our site, at all. I don't want advertisers, I want readers. I intend the cartoon to be free until such time as we make a deal for publication on a regular basis, like with a syndicate. We'll make a deal with a syndicate when the deals are chasing us, and not before.

[dutchdemocrat]

2. I have the same problem

I have the same problem posting video and images at Chris-floyd.com

If people link direct to the video or images, we don't get a page impression yet our bandwidth is still used. In order to pay for the bandwidth (we used 1/3 of a terabyte last month) we need to have visitors visit a page rather than just leech a file (link direct) in order to raise the visitor numbers on the page which contains the blogads. This in turn determines whether or not we attract advertisers which help pay the hosting costs. That's all we really want at this point... is to pay the bills.

At this point I am still allowing some leeching but I have used the site logs to go sites that use significant amounts of bandwidth by linking direct to the file rather than the page that contains the file and made them aware that it's not really cool to do so. We firmly believe in the Open Source philosophy, and don't have a problem sharing, but there is no reason not to give a link to the page where the image originated if you want to use a photo in a post - or a movie file.

That's why I am using Flash video more now - because people cannot link direct or download it. Same techology as video.google.com.

Anyway.

My two cents.