Man, this story is like an onion peel! Dude was acting to me like it was some big secret what image he used. He could have just said goatse and I would have known right away.

“First, I am not certain that saying, paraphrased, “its not your money that is being stolen, so what’s the problem” is a good attitude.”

Firstly, the point was Niall didn’t pay for the bandwidth, so he didn’t have it stolen from him. Yes, of course it was stolen from Yahoo. Stolen is stolen. It’s not right, but I would have more sympathy for him in this situation if it was bandwidth he paid for. If you disagree with that perspective, so be it.

Secondly, I’m not saying bandwidth theft is ok in any circumstance, in fact I said (emphasis mine): “Yes, that sucks and is wrong but if Kennedy hasn’t been ripped off hundreds, maybe thousands of times before in the same manner, I’d be shocked. Has he taken this action with anybody else or was it only Microsoft that was punished?”

That’s what I’m most curious about and I’ve tried contacting — now a couple times, and two different ways (Skype and email) — Mr. Kennedy for a direct response. Last night after dinner he did email me a reply that he was able to talk on Skype but I was gone from the office by that time, AFK, and unable to engage him in a Skype chat. Hopefully today I’ll catch up with him to get his side of the story at some point. I’m around, if he’s reading this.

You wrote: “Second, what about the Flickr terms of service? Would Niall have been in breach of them if he had knowingly allowed the hotlinking to stay?”

There were several reasonable responses — short of swapping the image with a NSFW image — that would have publically denounced Microsoft’s behavior and conformed to any Flickr TOS.

You wrote: “Third, does Microsoft have a responsibility to ensure that its employee bloggers understand intellectual property and bandwidth theft? Do they have a responsibility to ensure their staff do not steal bandwidth?”

Yes, of course Microsoft has a responsibility and I don’t expect them to publically tell us what type of discussions they have with the employee in question who do this (and it is one employee out of tens of thousands, not multiple employees) about hotlinking. It seems that some people want it both ways. Companies should not use blogs as a place to reprimand their employees. I wouldn’t want to be reprimanded by my employer — if I had one — in public and I certainly don’t expect Microsoft to do that.

So the rest of us probably won’t know what action Microsoft has taken on this situation.

In your case, Sam, where you were ignored you didn’t swap out the image with a porn image. I think what you did was a fine response. Did you follow the link to the past times I’ve written about how wrong hotlinking is before writing your comment and forming your opinion on how negatively I feel toward hotlinking and hotlinkers? I fully and totally support a reasonable response to hotlinking/hotlinkers.

This isn’t about how wrong hotlinking is, it’s about a former Microsoft employee’s response to said action.

Come on, Niall, it’s not like this was your own webhosting account! If Microsoft had done the same thing to one of the images on Niall’s own web hosting that would have cost him money.”

First, I am not certain that saying, paraphrased, “its not your money that is being stolen, so what’s the problem” is a good attitude. Bandwidth theft is not ok just because it is somebody else’s bandwidth that is being stolen.

Second, what about the Flickr terms of service? Would Niall have been in breach of them if he had knowingly allowed the hotlinking to stay?

Third, does Microsoft have a responsibility to ensure that its employee bloggers understand intellectual property and bandwidth theft? Do they have a responsibility to ensure their staff do not steal bandwidth?

Every single time I have complained about hotlinking to the perpetrator of that particular sin I have been ignored, until I brand the image with the words “!!BANDWIDTH THEFT IN PROGRESS!!”. The embarrassment is invariably enough to get them to take the graphic down, and if it so happens that they swear never to link to my sites or blogs again.. well that’s fine with me.. I have enough readers without them ;o)