#129 At one time you could find some fairly good clip art online... not any more. Requiem for Online Clip Art The other day one of the designers on the Design Cafe list requested links to good clip art sites. I dialed up my favorite search engine, Google.com, and did a quick search for clip art. You know what happens next -- up pops 40,000 links to clip art sites! Oh, baby! I started clicking. __ Whenever I go on a crusade that can potentially lead me into dangerous waters I first turn on my Cookies permissions (just to see what kind of screen spam they're throwing at me), and open each link into a new browser window. (Opening in a 'new' browser window allows me to quickly click it closed if it is dangerous or undesirable, and leave me back where I came from.) __ As I surfed into the din of clip art sites I began noticing they all seemed to be somehow related. I discovered a suspicious little oddity called "AutoRank" (a CGI link) built into the links of the majority of the sites. What could this be? All of these were enticing enough to read about, but they all turned out to be stalker sites. __ Absolutely-Free-Clipart uses: cgi-bin/rankem.cgi in the link, as did www.1-clipart-graphics.com. www.allfree-clipart.com uses cgi-bin/clicks3/ as does www.allfree-clipart.com, and www.bestclipart.com. I saw an obvious pattern, so I began capturing the source of the search engine result pages. __ A quick paste into BBEdit (trusty text editor) proved my suspicions. Same story across the board. Dozens and dozens all utilizing the same CGI, and linking either to each other, or to yet other clip art sites apparently owned by, or administrated by the same people. I was being bounced back and forth between stalker sites, being counted. Why? Probably to either sell advertising space based on each new visitor -- each time I get slammed into another site, I'm being counted as a "new" visitor, raising their rankings, and billings to advertisers. Mysteriously a number of the links lead back to ArtToday.com, or an ArtToday mirror. __ All of the sites visited wanted to drop at least one cookie on me. Most dropped multiple cookies on me. Many refused to let me go, popping up new windows as fast as I could close them. ALL of the websites we visited (78 to be exact) carried links which utilize the Rankem CGI code, or some other kind of tracking code. They all wanted to stalk me, and none of them had any clip art. Well at least none that was worth all the headache. __ You can try this yourself. When visiting one of "those" clip art sites, watch the location bar at the bottom of your browser, and note WHERE the links actually go. If a link has "AutoRankPro/rankem.cgi" or "cgi-bin/rank/rankem.cgi" in the name, you'll know you're now captured into their loop. __ Since I do not want to point any fingers, and perchance accuse any of the sites for any wrong doing, I won't go into the definition of stalker sites, and why they're evil. I can't even be sure that any of the sites are up to any wrongs. I will say however, that the unique email address which I set up (Unique, never used -- just as a spam catcher) to "register" on one of the sites brought me spam, including porno spam within hours of registering at the site. __ Folks, be very careful. These days many web sites don't give a flying hoot about you or why you came there. All they want is your email address. They stalk you, and they don't turn loose until they can add you to their lists. __ If you're smart, you won't even waste your time on search engine clip art results. You'll contact a known reputable and honest vendor like Artville or Dynamic Graphics. __ Three years ago, the web wasn't like this at all. You could go to an honest search engine, get honest results and click to an honest web site. Those clip art sites were unique, and some even had some decent art. But that was before Madison Avenue and the Dot-Coms took over. __ Yesterday, I wanted badly to report back to the CAFE that I had, indeed, found some clip art sites to recommend. However, to my dissappointment, I didn't see a single solitary image through the entire ordeal... especially none I'd want to report to my friends. Sorry. Fred * Note: for those of you who would like to experience the same nauseating escapade, just click on into my diary of the clip art surf I did today just for this article: "Let's go surfing for Clip Art"