liquidstar - 2:31 am on Mar 29, 2012 (gmt 0)

First of all, no one is stealing anything, they're infringing - an also illegal, but totally different thing.

Mashable ran an article today on a guy making $1,000 a day on Pinterest linking to amazon products. Sure you can Don Quixote Pinterest, but long term, everyone has to adapt their business model. No industry has ever beaten the internet.

Any hotlinking, URL rewriting, etc is just a bandaid. You just can't beat it, you have to figure out how to work in an environment of infringement. Some bands are getting really good at this by using the "infringed" works as advertisement for their concerts and merchandise. In my industry, we love it when people "infringe" our work as we can count on 1 sale for every 13 repins.