24/Sep/2006
Going through my webserver logs I have noticed that I seem to have gotten lately quite a few hits
coming through another referrer than search engines and such. Normally this is a good think, you would
think, as it proves that someone read your site and is linking back to it -- e.g. they might be mentioning
some code in their blog entries and provide a link back here. However, a closer look proved that this
was not the case!
A quick look at this link: http://www.jamosoft.com/applications3.htm
(link will open in new window) shows straight-away what the problem is: the site
is "publishing" mobile applications, with title, descriptions and even screenshots without any mention
of the author of the application, thus missleading the reader into believing that the application was actually
developed by the people who own the website. It's only the fact that they are actually stupidly providing a
link to the jar file off this webserver that gives it away -- to the trained eye -- that the application does
not belong to them!
Nowhere in their pages is explained what is the source of the applications provided (their are simply grouped
under a generic header "Applications"), nor is the name of the author supplied anywhere -- and this applies to
all of the applications on those pages! -- not to mention a link to the author's page.
Given that, and the fact that while I am happy to provide my applications to anyone to use free of charge, but
I am NOT happy with people taking credit for them, I have finally enabled referrer protection
on my website such that images, zip archives, jar files, jad descriptors etc can only be accessed from a page
on this site. Any attempt to provide a link to one of the above-mentioned file types from a page that is not
hosted on my servers will simply get an Access Denied message, thus preventing the user to access that
link from someone else's webpage.
Furthermore, I have updated the download disclaimer so now
it makes it very clear that if you do want to host one of my applications on your server without my permission
you will have to provide a link back to this site.
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