Blog From A Broad

the last word on hotlinking

Okay, some confusion still reigns. Let me explain this again, just in case you think I'm just being a miserable old hag.



This is NOT hotlinking:

Hey everyone, look at this fantastic image here!

It's a hyperlink to another site and it doesn't use anyone else's bandwidth. Everyone wins. Yay.

Hey everyone, look at this fantastic image I downloaded from someone else's site and am now showing on mine!

If you right-click on this image and look at its properties, you'll see that it's being hosted at this site (http://www.wittydomainname.com/MiniUs.jpg). I might have infringed on some sort of copyright law if I downloaded the image from, for example, a corporate site (I do apologise). It uses the bandwidth from my server, so I'm not using anyone else's. Yay.

This IS hotlinking:

Hey everyone, look at this fantastic image I found on another site!

If you right-click on this image and look at its properties, you'll see that it's being hosted at a site called http://ldmacdonald.tripod.com (don't have a cow - it's my tech writing site on Tripod. I'm just trying to prove a point.) Every time someone views this image here, the image's data is downloaded from the other site at Tripod. This uses bandwidth, which is something you have to pay for if you host your site somewhere other than Blogspot, Tripod, Geocities, etc. You are using someone else's bandwidth. Boo. In fact, you'll notice that Tripod has blocked the image (it shows the Tripod logo and tells you that the image is hosted there instead of the amusing graphic that's actually on that site - Tripod thinks hotlinking is bad, too.).

Okay? Okay.