Aardvark Daily
CNN defeats Ticker Pirates
Copyright © 1996 to Bruce Simpson
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Another Aardvark Exclusive!
Aardvark and 7am News readers will be familiar with the 7am News ticker which appears on these sites. Some may have also noticed a passing resemblance to the ticker on the CNN web-site, but it's just that, a passing resemblence.

It's a different story on a number of other Web sites around the world however. Some sleuthing by Aardvark earlier this week revealed that some 70 other Web sites were "stealing" the CNN ticker program and using it to display their own messages by linking directly to the CNN applet.

What's more, not only were the majority of sites illegally using the CNN ticker applet, they were also loading directly from the CNN site, effectively stealing bandwidth as well.

When Aardvark contacted CNN earlier this week for comment and to find out whether they considered this use "acceptable" they appeared to be totally unaware that it was happening.

Subsequently, once alerted, they changed their ticker applet so that it now displays the words "Illegal Use" and then automatically directs the viewers browser to the CNN site - very smart!

Many of the affected sites quickly found that their pages containing the illegally used applet became unusable, constantly sending visitors to the CNN site instead. Most of these have now been fixed but one or two remain unchanged, an obvious indication that their owners aren't paying much attention.

There are however a few sites that this move doesn't affect, because they actually stole the code rather than simply linking to the copy on the CNN site. I think this may be more than a little embarrassing for the Kansas City Kansas Area Chamber of Commerce. No doubt CNN have plans afoot to deal with them also.

This is another example of how easy it is to infringe intellectual property laws on the Net - but also how easy it can be to remedy such infringements.

Here are just some of the sites which are/were linking directly to the applet on CNN's web server:

www.genfo.com/
www.ncns.com/nov2396.html
www.bhnet.com.br/~wrfgold/
www.daimi.aau.dk/~snielsen/
lexus.tecnet.com/fae/
www.magna.com.au/~auscan/webpage.htm
www.daimi.aau.dk/~snielsen/letterman.html
napo.electrodata.com.pe/asf/
168.223.2.3/jamsrl/peis/
commercial-directory.com/free-ads/patriot.html

And here are some who have just uplifted the entire applet and installed it on their own servers:

pro.msrc.sunysb.edu:1333/~zero/micro.htm
www.go.com.jo/accessme/
alf.nbi.dk/~pgaarde/
groix-gw.univ-brest.fr:8080/~cranaivo/FEE/

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