Ex-girlfriend exacts revenge through Google Images | Hacker News Reader

Ex-girlfriend exacts revenge through Google Images

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93 pointsluigi30 comments

A more useful lesson to us is: use http status codes appropriately.

The site took down the photos, but they keep returning 200 for the links, and saying "image gone" in content. That's not how it's supposed to be.

Please check to see your web-framework and CRM actually respect HTTP, in spec text and spirit.

Maybe they use Arc, e.g. http://news.ycombinator.com/nosuchfile

It's not Arc that does that, it's the http server written in it. As you already knew.

Why wasn't it called "The http server written in Arc challenge" at http://www.paulgraham.com/arcchallenge.html?

It's common, though not acceptable, to conflate language with supporting tools/libraries, sometimes even the OS? It's very hard to draw the distinction when the language is not standardized, and/or heavily used (as language implementors are also its consumers.)

It should be a good exercise to take the public StackOverflow data and see how many "Rails" problems are actually Ruby, httpd, db, OS, or wetware problems.

It could have been a better read. It doesn't actually tell if the girl in question used SEO/blackhat techniques to rank his name. My feeling is that it was not an act of gaming the image SERPs, it was merely a byproduct of MemeGenerator's SEO optimization.

She just used the Meme's sites optimization, but she named her pictures correctly and etc.

The article makes it sound like she is some kind of genius but using http://www.memegenerator.net/ is not rocked science. Pretty clever though.

with all the publicity he will get more girls now :)

I am flabbergasted by the tech savvy of the ex-girlfriend (of course) but also of the mom who immediately knew to contact webmasters to have the image removed from their servers and also to hit it from the copyright angle, too (a law professor perhaps?). However, I don't quite get it when she declares "My minor son's ex-girlfriend took a copyrighted picture of him (we own copyright)", the article mentions it was a professionally taken photo, so the photographer (or studio) owns the copyright in this case.

"Hell hat no fury" is very old, but the girl's revenge is so cool!

Rights of ownership can be transferred to anyone, even girls.

I've never seen professional studios transfer copyright to people. That's why none of the photo services in Walmart, Walgreens, etc. will make a copy of a photo that was taken professionally.

She might have a right to noncommercial distribution.

It's not uncommon to give that for childrens' photographs and "glamor shots" that you get at the mall. This way people can make copies for their own private use, without worrying about breaking the law and the photographer will still get paid if say the boys photo ends up on the nightly news.

Exactly; in fact that's how all the studio shots I had before worked. That does not mean that you have the copyright, though, the photographer/studio can still use the photo in ways they see fit and sell it.

The fact that the photo studio owns the copyright doesn't mean that they can use the photo is ways they see fit and/or sell it. Copyright is a sword, not a shield: With copyright they can prevent the use of the image as they see fit.

The right to use an image or likeness of a person as they see fit is conveyed by the model waiver. When you sit for a private, personal portrait session that you pay for, the waiver you sign shouldn't assign all rights to your likeness to the studio.

On the other hand, if you are paid to model something, the waiver you sign probably does give the photog all rights to those images in perpetuity.

But even then there are limitations. Most jurisdictions won't allow an implied endorsement unless the picture was specifically taken for that purpose. For example, if a young model sits for a stock picture which depicts him sitting in an Aeron chair and he later becomes a famous programmer, Aeron cannot buy that picture from the photographer and run an ad saying "Bill Gates loves Aeron Chairs!"

That's not entirely true. A children's portrait service will transfer copyright (they explicitly state this) and provide the original digital file for an extra fee.

Btw, I consider this whole practice extortion.

It's been awhile since I've had anything professionally taken, but previously I've never had any trouble finding a photographer unwilling to assign copyright with a bit of wrangling. I've never paid extra, but I have been quite adamant that I won't be paying at all without it.

Good to know! I will keep this in mind.

Some photographers with more enlightened business models will do a shoot and then give you an agreed-upon subset of the images (2 or 3) with copyright transfer.

If you want the others at some point, you can pay an additional fee.

This way, the photographer still has the potential for later additional profit, and you have the copyright for the photos you like best. Everyone wins.

100% of the photos that I've commissioned (including wedding photos) have their copyright assigned to me.

The guy featured in this photo looks suspiciously like the actor used in this Motorola Super Bowl advert preview[1].

Just a coincidence, or part of a viral campaign?

[1] http://www.edibleapple.com/motorola-teases-super-bowl-xoom-a...

This is almost entirely off-topic, but wow, I'm stunned by the massive amounts of (what looks to be) misogyny going on there. Now, I may be skewed by the fact that if my girlfriend had done that, I would have married her on the spot (don't worry ladies, I'm joking), but virtually every comment, and the article itself, call her a crazy bitch and the like. What if the guy in question had broken up with her after, say, getting her pregnant? Surely that'd be a deserved punishment.

Furthermore, there are how many porn websites regarding, basically evangelising "revenge" on ex-girlfriends?

Anyway, that's enough of a "Someone is WRONG on the internet" speech on an unrelated article. Kudos to the girl for doing that, I guess. I certainly wouldn't have thought of it.

The mom actually responded to this completely wrong as it's now become an internet meme. She should have flooded the web with other pictures of him to drown out the embarrassing ones.

I'd be pretty touched if my gf does something like this for me - only if they were all good messages.

Sane, Pretty, Smart. So hard to find all three in a woman these days. People who do crap like this have to be handled with care, engage them and it can lead to murder.

Gavin De Becker spent his entire career (30 years ) dealing with this kind of thing, protecting clients/celebrities from all kinds of psychos. "The Gift of Fear". https://www.gavindebecker.com/resources/books_by_gavin_de_be...

Sane, Handsome, Smart. So hard to find all three in a man these days.

I've met lots of sane, pretty and smart women. I wouldn't let a few exceptions tilt my perspective.

Sane, pretty, and smart... and single.

It's a human being thing. And amazingly enough, those who are sane, pretty, and smart have a tendency to date each other. :)

Considering that she's a teenage minor I think this is a pretty good level of sanity for her.

I'd consider her cleverness at googlebombing her ex to be a +1.

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