HOTLINKING

As of late I have been noticing more and more people hotlinking images from my journal. I politely ask people not to hotlink images, but I guess some don't listen. If you do not know what hotlinking is, here's the explanation:

Hotlink bandwidth theft, hotlinking, file leeching, bandwidth bandits, hot links, bandwidth leeching, hotlinks, external linking, remote linking, deep linking and direct linking are all words and phrases used to describe a single problem faced by many webmasters.

They describe the practice of building web pages that contain unauthorized content links, known as a hotlink, direct link, or remote link to files hosted by another site. Notice that we said content links and not navigation links that lead to another site. Content links are file references that the browser fetches to draw the page such as images, style sheets, scripts or even complete web pages that are rendered within a frame. In other words, these are embedded content or embedded objects within an html page.

The result of hotlinking is that the offending site is able to present its pages without paying for the bandwidth needed to serve up the stolen content. The victim site ends up paying the bandwidth expense for serving up the files without gaining any page views.

Many webmasters would not mind if an image were copied and hosted by another site. Especially, if permission was sought in advance. The objection in the case of hotlinking is to paying bandwidth bills for someone else's benefit.
You can read much more about this here: Hotlink bandwidth theft, hotlinking, files leeching...

Now, you should have no trouble about hotlinking images.

But now comes the point when people know what hotlinking is, yet they still do it. This is just plain stealing and rude. I, like many other webmasters I know, do not like it. Why? Because it's bandwidth theft, and it costs us money, and it angers us even more if we know you know what hotlinking is and what it does. There are some sites out there who allow it, and that is fine, but you should check first before you go and hotlink an image. Checking or asking before you hotlink an image or file is polite, and hopefully after you see if you can or cannot hotlink you will respect the webmasters wishes.

Now, there are always those people who like to be even ruder and say: "It’s just an image, get over it." Or "It’s not life and death here."

You’re right; it's not life or death. But it does cost us money, so that is why we’re so uptight about it. We pay for accounts, our sites, and our space. We are paying our own money to post picture or files for people to see. We don't have to, but we do. Most image services or sites have preset bandwidth limits for the month, and if the bandwidth goes over then it crashes until it resets for the month. Or they will charge you money for the extra bandwidth that is taken, thus making us pay more for our site or image host. And we don't like that. By hotlinking images you are taking the bandwidth from that site causing the site to crash or costing us more money. Would you like that if that was the case for you? Would you like it if we came to your house and took money out of your wallet, or take money off your paycheque? Of course not, but that is what you're doing by hotlinking from webmasters and journals.

Personally for me I am sick of it. I ask politely for people not to hotlink from my journal, but I still see people don't listen. I don't have to post all the pictures, but I do, because I like it and I like to make other people happy. But hotlinkers who have stolen from me just make me angry. If it keeps up (which I hope it doesn’t after this rant/post) I will most likely put this journal on friends only, so only people I trust can view all the Orlando/LOTR/Whatever photos I post. And believe me I don't want it to resort to that.

So now I am going to be posting a link at the bottom of every picture post to this one, so you will have no excuse to hotlink from me or other webmasters. If I still catch you hotlinking from me then I will replace the image file with this one: a hotlinking message. the file name will change constantly so don't bother hotlinking this hotlinking image. lol If you really do not know what hotlinking is if I catch you, then I will politely point you to this post and hope that you'll stop.

I am hoping that you will listen to this and respect the wishes of me and other webmasters. Having a site and posting pictures is supposed to be fun, supposed to be for people's enjoyment. If we can't do that anymore because of people hotlinking then you have no one else to blame but yourself if you hotlink.

Thank you. Now I’m going to make some new icons. ;)

[edit to add] Right clicking and saving images to your computer is fine, that's not hotlinking.