Explain Hot-linking To Me
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Yesterday I got pulled up for hot-linking to an image that someone else was hosting. I have a vague idea on what hot-linking is, but im still not really understanding why people get upset about it.
As far as I know hot-linking is when you link to am image on someone elses site that they are hosting. There are both pro’s and con’s for doing this. I understand totally that some smaller sites get upset about this style of linking, because they lose some of their bandwidth and also dont get a link at the same time. However, that being said how much bandwidth can be used from an image that is only about 64kb? Additionally, it would only take me about 10 seconds to find the image somewhere else, download it to my computer and then upload it using Wordpress. Thus, I really dont see the fuss.
Finally, at the end of the day the images that everyone is hosting are images owns and copyrighted by other companies, so in reality we probably shouldnt be hosting those images without the direct acceptance from the copyright holder.
That’s just my two bobs worth, what do you think?
8 Comments
If it only takes a couple of minutes to find and download an image to your site so you are not drawing on other people’s bandwidth then I believe that’s what you should do.
When you look at it that one person is doing this you might say, so what, but if hundreds of others are doing the same thing it does add up.
I stopped taking other people’s images quite a while back and now use my own images or I get them from places like iStockPhoto.com. I pay about a buck an image and from then on I don’t have to worry about that image, it’s mine.
I have a client that called me up in a panic because someone was inquiring about an image on his site. So it cost him money for me to put the image on his site and it cost for me to remove it. He doesn’t use other people’s images now.
Well, aside from the copyright issues, what about when your site gets Digged and that hotlinked image gets pulled from a small site 250,000 times in an hour and gets it banned by its hosting service for going over some limit or other.
Moreover, if you hotlinked a picture of some cute puppies today, who’s to say that an image showing another sort of cute puppies might not be on the site with the same file name tomorrow.
It makes no sense to hotlink anything, legally, ethically or technically there are so many things that could go wrong for both sides and it’s almost as easy not to hotlink.
db
Technically hot linking of an image is illegal and considered an offense.
You might say a small image should not matter the original hosting website… but the main issue is… there are so many people like you who tend to think the same way.
As said above, with so many people hotlinking that small image can turn big headache for original hoster.
I hope you have learnt something from this and one should never hotlink image, instead upload on your own server and give linkback for image credit. This is more sane and universally acceptable mechanism.
Sadly most of us tend to ignore this, as this takes few minuted more than usual… everyone is busy so lets hotlink, what say?
…excuse me for my typing… m in hurry got to go!
On a related note. Lifting a full-size image that is someone else’s copyright is not legal in many countries (particularly US, UK, and Europe). However, there may be a caveat in the US at least if you display only a thumbnail of the lifted image. But, there are so many sources of great creative commons images out there, there’s never any need to steal someone else’s images.
db
It’s not just about bandwidth, it’s more of an annoyance that if the person hosting it took the time to find the image, crop it , save it, upload it and link it the person using it should either do the same themselves or explicitly gain permission/provide a link back to the related article or the root site url.
Also, since the image is hosted on the persons server they have control over it and can change it to anything they want, even explicit material. I often change hotlinked images when i find people using my product review images on eBay and the like.
I’ve never hotlinked an image unless invited to for a webring/ blogroll etc. I don’t understand why you would do that at all. It’s not a big deal to save the image and load it on your site. Why do it any other way? Sites pay for bandwidth. Some of the sites I really liked stopped publishing due to content “borrowed” through hotlinking. It just became too expensive for them. Your thinking that you should just be able to do what you want is pretty arrogant and self centred. You were asked not to, that should be enough.