Seriously internet, what the fuck?
Am I the only person who thinks hotlinking is rude anymore? Jesus. It’s irrational — it’s such a small amount of bandwidth when it’s just an image it’s almost dumb to talk about it — but there’s something about just basic internet politeness that makes me go from zero to FURIOUS in 12 seconds flat whenever I find hotlinking.
Hey, help a newbie out? What’s hotlinking??
For haitchem - Hotlinking, also called direct linking or bandwidth theft, is when you post an image by using it’s URL/web-address from a site, server or hosting account that isn’t your own. For ex; instead of saving the image to your own computer and then uploading it to your own hosting account (such as Photobucket, ImageShack for example), you simply check the properties of the image and use the URL being used to display the image.
Oh yeah, I’ve had to go to great lengths to stop people from hotlinking images. I run an imagegallery ( http://vindieselgallery.net/ ) and I’ve had people rip off the code and hotlink the entire site and call it their own. This was before when I coded the thing by hand so to speak and it was a lot easier than now. I’ve had exceeded bandwidth payments towards $100 before I figured out a full proof way to stop it. Which now means that Norton security reacts to my htaccess and shows nothing at all instead *sigh* Hotlinking is really one of the things I hate about internets! Bandwidth costs money people! *sigh*
I had the same problem as elizaria, before I moved to a server where I could block it with htaccess. It made me crazy! Especially the people who would pull the “I don’t understand, tee hee!” act when told they were forcing someone else to pay real money for the extra bandwidth.
Oh, no, I find it both irritating as fuck and incredibly rude.
Okay, read said explanation, but I still don’t get it. How does one “check the properties” of an image? Are they copying it and pasting it to their own page? Is that it? Sorry, I don’t generally use images, so I haven’t the foggiest idea of what really goes on.
An image, to be seen, has to be hosted somewhere. It’s possible to point the webpage html to wherever an image is sitting. Most people are using their own webspace (when coding a webpace) and thus are simply pointing to a seperate directory in the same place. However if I wanted to post a picture to livejournal, I could still upload it to my own web space and point my LJ entry to that place.
However some people will point to pictures hosted on OTHER people’s webspaces and thus not paying for the bandwidth required to download this image. See, when images appear, you are using bandwidth off the server hosting it. If you link to an image not hosted on your own space, but on someone else’s, you are hotlinking. Taking their server bandwidth. This can cause a HUGE and EXPENSIVE spike to someone’s stats when they aren’t expecting it.
You check the properties of an image by right-clicking and going to properties. That tells you the url address of the image, then people can steal that url and use it to embed images in their own things. So it looks like the image is on their website, but actually your computer has had to go to this other website to find the image to put in the space. I hope that makes sense!
Actually that did. Thank you. I cannot believe that people actually do that. I don’t like using anything that I haven’t actually done myself, unless someone made it specifically for me, but then I save it to my computer. A friend gave me instructions on how to do that, so I assume that I’ve done it correctly as it shows up in “My Images” folder. Plus, why bother with stealing somebody else’s webspace? I had to do some checking for a co-worker and there are some relatively cheap offers, although from what I understand you have to know how to code stuff. I’m not HTML savvy, so I don’t know how hard that is. I only remember that DOS was the bain of my existence back yonder, so I’ve been avoiding that sort of stuff ever since. :)
What about linking to the page with the thumbnail(s)? Also rude and annoying and internet acceptable? I get confused and don’t post images.
What’s interesting about this is that:
a) The internet has become more accessable to just the average person, so people are less likely to know this kind of stuff before doing it - they’re less likely to be paying for their own bandwidth now than before and stuff like that.
b) People don’t realize that it’s bad because, well, now, you’re supposed to do it. YouTube promotes imbedding videos into pages, doesn’t it? How is taking this awesome picture and plopping it in the middle of your latest post any different?
It’s still rude! You’re right to be mad!
nope, you are not rude, but considering how much the use of the net has changed over the last 3 years, your assumption of rudeness will only be understood by those folks like us, who do remember and actually *know* what it means that people are hosting stuff on their own homepage with their OWN MONEY.
kids between 10 and 18 ?!?
all they know is that all the stuff they see and use and consume and dl are not hosted by themselves, but by youtube (and millions of other streaming sites), myspace, flickr, imageshack, LJ, one-click hoster like megaupload, yousendit etc etc.
they dont even understand, why there are people, who pay having their own space… (or maybe the younger cousinds that i have, are just too dense when i tried to explain to them that concept, or maybe i am not clever enough to be able to explain it to them properly.
I run a fan site for an obscure actor with an interesting face. Someone decided to hotlink and drove up my bandwith to such a level that it actually cost me money. I was FURIOUS.
So I revamped the page, renamed the images, and replaced the hotlinked image with a picture of someone having sex with a goat.
Never Google “goat sex.” You’ll scar your corneas.
I bet you already watched Joe’s interview, but in case you didn’t, clickity click here. :)
No, it’s still rude. Even though it doesn’t drive the relative bandwidth use up too much these days, it’s really not the other person’s call to make. By hotlinking, they’re making bandwidth-usage decisions for you, and that’s just not right. They’re still writing checks that you have to cash, even if it’s not literal cash, you know?