This is kind of outrageous. I sort of look at ajaxian as a reliable and interesting source of info on webdev, but now I'm totally turned off. I'll make it a point to not visit. Shame on them.
First off, this is bad behavior on Ajaxian's part, and they should learn that people will appreciate them just as much (more, actually) if they send the user off-site to the content they're pointing at.
Second, shouldn't it be possible for Roman to prevent another site from embedding his IFRAME? Either catching the window.parent.location in JavaScript or only serving the IFRAME page if his own domain is in the referrer?
Román Cortés is having a lot of fun with CSS tricks these days. He just built an example rolling CSS coke can that uses background-attachment, background-position, and a few other tricks to get the effect. No fancy CSS3 needed here!
It looks like they gave him full credit for this. Unless he was selling access to this blog post, I'm not sure why this is an issue. It seems even more benign than piracy. (And as sophacles points out, this uses less bandwidth than a direct link, too.)
Clearly, Román is willing to have his bandwidth used in order for people to look at his cool CSS trick. So why is this a problem when it's a little less bandwidth, plus a third-party endorsement?
>It looks like they gave him full credit for this. Unless he was selling access to this blog post, I'm not sure why this is an issue.
Perhaps you missed the quite important point that Ajaxian was using this post to drive traffic to their site effectively and selling advertisements based on its, and not their own, merits? They're not just linking to something and showing it to their users, they're getting his paid-for account to serve the content so that they can make advertising revenue off of his work. I think the ethical issue with such an action should be clear.
He is angry that they effectively hijacked his bandwidth to earn them revenue off of his work. And all without the courtesy of asking his permission. Twice.
Yeah... his content. You're begging the question here, casually skipping over the question of whether they can just appropriate it by trying to draw some sort of stretched equality here. There's an enormous difference between him posting his content and them posting his content!
Isn't that interesting how having no price on the post seems like it would make one look differently at the seemingly-legitimate-copyability of one's work?
And, I suppose, sometimes people make a lot of money off of a work and then don't mind copies because they feel like they've already made (and continue to make) much from it.
Doesn't a direct link cost more bandwidth? In which case does the one google ad on your site make the difference in cost/income? Further, does the ajaxian style hotlinking -- full credit and source link provided, constitute the same think most people think of for hotlinking (no credit, just images from someone else's site...).
On the other hand, this guy is seriously upset about this, but the Ajaxian staff feel that it's proper to just ignore him completely? Whether this guy has a point or not, ignoring him completely on both occasions (the first one where they didn't even give him attribution) shows that they are just a bunch of assholes.
He also does give an example of another site (Smashing Magazine) seeing the post on Ajaxian and believing that the work was the original work of Ajaxian (or a staff member of Ajaxian) and not the work of the real author, so it seems reasonable for him to be upset about this. Especially since his work seems to only be driving fame/publicity for Ajaxian, and not himself.
if the ajaxian page were just a link, there would be a percentage of people who would see the image/explanation and then decide not to click through. they weren't interested in it, and so they don't use up the guy's bandwidth. with the iframe, those people use up the bandwidth whether they want to see it or not.
The satisfaction of getting visitors is very important. Don't read his post as about costs alone. It is more like he paid the costs but got nothing in return. No visitors, exposure or fame :)
I tried to read it like that, but the part where his screenshot of the rickrolling, which includes the whole ajaxian post, has attribution to him, as well as a direct link to his site. Im not sure how that is not exposure/fame.
