Fuddrucked: A meaty lesson in intellectual property.

Game developer Robb Briggs came up with a game so popular, people all over the internet were playing it, some—as he discovered looking at his site stats—who were linking to it on their own sites. But one linker, attracted by the themes of BurgerTime, stood out: restaurant chain Fuddruckers. He explains:

They didn’t even bother to download the game and host it themselves. They linked to my game, using my game and my bandwidth to promote their restaurant. Which is not only stealing from me, but it’s also really, really stupid. I mean, passing someone else’s content off as your own is nasty. But actually linking to it means that I can change it to whatever the hell I want. Which is dumb, dumb, dumb on their part.

Now, if you go to the Fuddrucker's website and click on the "Fuddrockers" link, you can find the BurgerTime icon. But click it and the BurgerTime you find isn't about stacking patties in a game interface; it's opens up a series of webpages showing grisly slaughterhouse photos, plus this note in a pop-up:

He adds: "But did I do this right away? No! I waited until the Friday evening before a three-day weekend. So either it’ll be up for three days, or someone is going to have to go in during their vacation to fix it."

(Via Linkfilter.)