Why Hotlinking is a Bad Idea
April 5th, 2010
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It’s never a good idea to hotlink someone’s image by putting an embedded image in your own blog or website. That’s especially true these days with so many free hosting sites and hosting so cheap to begin with. Still someone got lazy and apparently found an image I had up. It was only a tiny image that was actually downscaled from an Associated Press story.
There’s another issue with hotlinking images. When someone else runs the server, they can find out when there’s traffic coming from an image like that. They can also change the image if they want, since it’s their hosting account.
It looked something like this:
But I fixed it
I wonder how long until he notices?
Yes, I was tempted to put something dirty there, but I didn’t. I still might change it up and put something more insulting or humorous.
This is why you should not hotlink images. It really doesn’t bother me much that a tiny amount of bandwidth got used for this image, but the fact that it gave this opportunity couldn’t be missed.
However, if you do want to hotlink an image you see on this site in order to promote something on this site or some other important concept, such as on a forum or board, that’s not really going to bother me, as I do know many of those sites don’t have their own built in hosting and if you don’t have server, it can be cumbersome to find a place to post it. Just as long as it’s not using an exorbitant amount of bandwidth, I don’t care that much. Unless, of course, it’s in support of something I completely disagree with (like opposition to genetically modified foods) because in that case I’ll probably exercise my right to change it and make you look like a fool.
This entry was posted on Monday, April 5th, 2010 at 2:46 am and is filed under Agriculture, Misc, Website. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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April 5th, 2010 at 5:29 am
That’s awesome. Still up.
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April 5th, 2010 at 6:28 am
Brilliant
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April 5th, 2010 at 8:33 am
I love it.
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April 5th, 2010 at 10:59 am
Pure awesome! Love it.
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April 5th, 2010 at 11:32 pm
Still there at 14:35 AEST
(04:35 GMT)
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April 6th, 2010 at 1:02 am
Hotlinking is necessary when images are still protected by copyright. The formation of an utterance “<img src …” is a reference to something that exists elsewhere on the network where you may not have the right to copy. Using it may be dangerous for the reasons you’ve pointed out however if you’re not entitled to copy the original source material (and most content on the net is not available for such frivolity by default), so hotlinking is really the only legal option for the vast majority of images.
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April 6th, 2010 at 4:49 am
themusicgod1 said:
Heh…. so you think that just because you are hotlinking your are entitled to publish someone else’s work on your page?
Seriously dude…
If you want to publish someone else’s work, you as permission, or publish under “Fair use” provided you meet the conditions for it. Hotlinking does not – in any way – entitle you to use someone else’s work. Who ever fed you that stupid piece of inorance?!
/Michael
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April 6th, 2010 at 4:50 am
themusicgod1 said:
Heh…. so you think that just because you are hotlinking your are entitled to publish someone else’s work on your page?
Seriously dude…
If you want to publish someone else’s work, you ask permission, or publish under “Fair use” provided you meet the conditions for it. Hotlinking does not – in any way – entitle you to use someone else’s work. Who ever fed you that stupid piece of inorance?!
/Michael
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April 6th, 2010 at 6:18 am
1) Still up.
2) Legendary.
3) Was just on Straight Dope reading a very skeptical analysis of Dianetics / Scientology – which was largely about Cecil Adams pointing out some of the more bizarre elements of the religion / asshattery and noting a few of the scandals. Both sides of the page were adorned with huge banner ads chosen by Google for Dianetics. I did not click on them.
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April 6th, 2010 at 10:14 am
I’mnotreallyhere said:
You should have. Not because Dianetics has any value whatsoever, (it doesn’t) but because you would have earned Cecil a bit of money at the cult’s expense.
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April 6th, 2010 at 11:24 am
Michael Karnerfors said:
That image can be found on numerous web sites. It was originally from an associated press article (at least I think that’s the original source)
I figured it was fair use to put it up as it had already been distributed and cited by numerous sites. Also in general, something like that tends to fall under fair use when it’s intended to be a publicity thing to begin with.
I try to be reasonably careful with the use of media to have a good case that it falls under fair use or is either open source or already widely avaliable and therefore basically “abandon-ware”
If worst comes to worst, usually anyone who does not want their media used will send a cease and desist letter or some other communication before taking formal legal action.
They could have just used it.
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April 6th, 2010 at 11:44 am
drbuzz0 said:
It wasn’t adressed at you Steve… but at “themusicgod1″ who seems to be under the delusion that if you hotlink you aren’t breaking copyright.
/Michael
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April 8th, 2010 at 12:52 am
Now THAT is funny!
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April 8th, 2010 at 3:33 am
Michael Karnerfors said:
Two main problems with hot linking: Problem for the owner is that everybody who sees the image is using his bandwidth. This might be a serous issue if the site with the hotlink has lots of traffic and the owner has limited capacity or a cheap or free web site with limited quota so it’s worse than copying and using the image.
Danger for the linker is that he doesn’t control the image, usually it simply disappears.
But if you manage to piss of the image owner because he don’t like your message or because you use his resources he can change it to the opposite view, something funny or something disturbing.
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April 8th, 2010 at 11:59 am
I am truly sorry if i made some hotlink image from you. Just see it in greenpeace pages or web…just didn´t know. Better know or dialogue with me before publishing an incomplete truth about my blog who aims only to promote environmental education. You can check there is no Adsenses, no “donations”. I do it for free and opoen to ideas to promote sustainability. Peace!
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April 8th, 2010 at 12:19 pm
Hello João and welcome to Depleted Cranium. I’m sure you won’t mind us having a little chuckle at your expense when you did use Steve’s bandwidth witout asking.
On a serious note about GMO though…
If you want to “educate” people on “environmental” issues, then I must ask you: do you fact check what you “educate” or are you just cut & pasting from others?
Greenpeace opposes GMO… but in most people opinion here on DP, they do it wrongly and unjustified. Even worse is that they are promoting a block on scientific progress, just because they have decided not to like GMO crops. This in turns means pople die from starvation when they could have been saved by GMO crops.
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April 8th, 2010 at 3:43 pm
Heh, he’s apologized and the image is still there… hilarious!
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April 8th, 2010 at 6:17 pm
João Soares said:
Oh no, please continue to do so in the future!
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April 8th, 2010 at 9:00 pm
While you’re at it, Dr. Buzzo, why not take some time to debunk each of the anti-GM points made in the blog post that (ironically) stole that image from you? I’m sure a lot of us would greatly appreciate it.
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April 13th, 2010 at 9:36 pm
João Soares said:
I’ve never liked the phrase “I’m sorry if I . . .” It implies the speaker does not accept that the offense actually occurred. In this case, I can be lenient, as English is not his first language. But it bugs me that this phrase has gotten entrenched in our language.
Please read the accusations against you carefully; no one accused you of using Adsense or asking for donations (and why would anyone here care if you did anyway?). What, exactly, was false about what Dr Buzz said? What was the “incomplete truth” that bothers you so much? And why do you feel he needs to “dialog” with you before smacking you down for stealing his bandwidth? It’s not a courtesy which you showed him when you hotlinked an image hosted on his site.
Perhaps it’s true, you didn’t know it was wrong to steal other people’s bandwidth. Now you do.
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May 3rd, 2010 at 3:39 pm
The biggest problem usually isn’t the production of food, but the distribution. Solve production with irrigation, fertilizers, breeding, and better biological science (understanding pH and soil bacteria for example), but you still have the other side of the coin. Getting the food paid for, shipped, stored, eaten, inspected, cleaned, and so on is another set of issues.
Granted “usually” is a qualifier because production is like the foundation under your house – example being how China and Ireland had their famous famines due to actually reduced production/yield. Lose the foundation and no manner of merchanting will fix the lack of supply. Rations, imports, existing stocks of alternate foods, emmigration (prevented in “Great Leap”), and any other such methods are just buying time for production to be replaced.
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June 19th, 2010 at 10:01 am
@7: Uttering the characters “<a href=”" is not publishing. Therefor, there is no “entitlement” needed to publish, because publishing is not taking place. You are merely *referring* to the thing you inscribe within the quotes. That’s it. Take your “inorance [sic]” and stuff it in your hat. I do not need your or any rights holder permission to refer to things, that is a rudimentary part of language. It’s right up there with calling things by their name. In fact, a URI/URL is really just a special kind of name. Calling something by its correct name, in a document that does not contain that thing is not publishing that thing. If you have a problem with people making copies of your document, then block it at the server level, or the web browser level of the person who by their command creates it. But keep my ability to use a correctly formatted reference for things out of it.
In the country where I live at least, it is the law of the land that hyperlinking is not publishing, although a case has been brought to the supreme court level that has yet to be resolved on this issue. I wouldn’t expect this to be the case for all readers of this comment, but just a FYI.
Heh…. so you think that just because you are hotlinking your are entitled to publish someone else’s work on your page?
Seriously dude…
If you want to publish someone else’s work, you ask permission, or publish under “Fair use” provided you meet the conditions for it. Hotlinking does not – in any way – entitle you to use someone else’s work. Who ever fed you that stupid piece of inorance?!
/Michael
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June 19th, 2010 at 10:04 am
Damn, I could have sworn I had quoted the bottom. Oh well, future readers: I was replying to the start of “Heh…
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October 19th, 2011 at 1:26 pm
The issue is now resolved in Canada – Hyperlinking is *not* publishing.
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October 19th, 2011 at 4:55 pm
themusicgod1 said:
Except it’s the internet. Policing it generally is quite hard and does not result in all regulations being followed no matter how hard it is tried. Sure, regulations like that may stop major media sites, but there are millions of other sites, some of them rather obscure and small in terms of exposure, but taken together they do make an impact, and can’t really be dealt with individually.
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October 19th, 2011 at 7:05 pm
What regulations are you referring to? And how is it an argument against hotlinking?
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