I won’t pretend to have read every comment, the posts are quite a bit old now. I just wanted to jog in a little opinion from “nobody” who doesn’t know much about nothing.

What offends me is this: the hotlinked image was “stealing” or “appropriating” or “borrowing” or “what-the-H-ever” the bandwidth from another server. I don’t think the inclusion of an image online is necessarily free-reign for use. I don’t think anything you can say would excuse the contributing-editor’s misuse of another’s bandwidth. “ouch, sorry” would have sufficed.

Your rambling about “cache” is only relevant if the target audience of the article were readers who were linking over from the original site where the image was hosted. Thus, the image would have already been in the cache.. right? Or possibly I missed your point. sounded a bit deep in it.

I do appreciate the whole legalese premise of your ‘rebuttal’, makes for quite interesting defensive posting.

Further note: As far as I’m concerned, the hotlinking was ‘uncalled-for’. The response may not have been polite, but afterall.. what if professional bloggers just hotlinked each other’s images all day long? of course, you would probably note they do when they include little buttons to visit their friend’s sites.

The biggest issue of them all, as far as I’m concerned, is quality control. It worries me that the company that I work for has editors inserting YouTube videos directly into articles. Besides the problems with allowing them to write HTML on their own, (which is nearly always invalid…) we have no control over what YouTube do with the file we have embedded. Sometimes the file is the subject of a DMCA takedown notice (Ironically, often issued by our parent company who own the copyright !) and we end up with a “Sorry, this video is no longer available.” message instead of the video we originally embedded. Embedding javascript ads from a third party company worries me just as much, if not more. Youtube and our ad suppliers are reasonably reliable but imagine what the angry young blogger who already “stole” the images from the actual content creator could do to your site with a quick rewrite rule and an offensive image.

I’m firmly of the opinion that hotlinking is not a copyright violation (and definitely not “stealing”) and I’m not sure about serving up your own copy of the image either. Proxy servers cache copies, Google caches copies, your own computer caches a copy. Why would it be a violation for a website to cache a copy ? Until the courts decide the issue of making perfect, or even imperfect, digital copies of copyrighted materials, even the lawyers are just full of hot air.

From Response #60

The IP doesn’t pay my hosting bills. The IP also makes many security attacks possible. That doesn’t make it right to attack someone.

It is you that made the claim that someone is being “attacked” and I merely responded that any such claim is ridiculous.

From Response #86

I never said DU was attacking anyone. Someone
else said that the internet protocol makes
hotlinking possible, so it’s ok to hotlink. I
pointed out that IP (Well, HTTP really) makes
attacks possible too, but it doesn’t mean it’s
right to attack people.

It is illogical to compare the use of the web as it was designed with the exploitation of the http protocol for nefarious purposes. The former utilizes a fundamental design principle of the web whereas the later relates to attempts to pervert those design principles to seize control of a person’s machine or glean privileged information. One is using the web as it was intended whereas the other is not.

Then, don’t complain about the consequences of playing devil’s advocate.

After reading SeanH’s comments, I retract my post #1. You are right to go into legalese given his attitude, which was presumably expressed on his site beforehand.

As previously stated, it’s not my website. I have nothing to do with it. I’m simply playing devil’s advocate in the debate.

There is no “attack” here and to claim as such is ridiculous.

I never said DU was attacking anyone. Someone else said that the internet protocol makes hotlinking possible, so it’s ok to hotlink. I pointed out that IP (Well, HTTP really) makes attacks possible too, but it doesn’t mean it’s right to attack people.

If you’re going to quote me, you should follow the whole conversation so you don’t look foolish.

Very well written introduction and comments. A tip of the hat.

#81, Thomas,

I like your analogy about the candy.

***

I consider the “web” as akin to a public beach. Anyone can get there for the price of bus fare or parking. Look at whatever other people are there. It doesn’t matter what their suit costs, looking is free. Staring or overt oogling may be rude, but they are not illegal. If someone objects to you, or anyone for that matter, admiring their revealing bathing suit then it their prerogative to cover up or else leave the beach. Heck, they could even hang a blanket or towel between you and them.

- Hotlinking is rude, but not illegal.
- Hotlinking uses a sites bandwidth without providing any benefit to that site.
- Hotlinking is pretty lazy
- Hosting, and then distributing, someones creative work is copyright infringment. Hotlinking avoids this hurdle, but adds others.
- Hotlinking is easily stopped on the server side
- Hotlinking is awful for your site in terms of consistancy and quality control.

All in all I’m happy for people to hotlink, the people that take liberties with this must also be happy with the fact that I can change the image to anything I want. Be that a giant set of rainbow penises, or as suggested earlier, horse porn.

I think the right thing to do would be to reprimand whoever did it and stop defending it. It may be a mild infraction, but it was still a discourteous thing to do.

B. There is no “theft” in that nothing was taken from the site that was not freely provided. If someone puts out a bag of candy for all to have, you cannot claim theft when someone takes a piece nor can you claim theft if I mention to someone else where the bag is located without mentioning who put out the bag.

C. There was no “theft of creativity” unless we establish that he actually created the image in the first place.

If I create a portal site with images I found from scouring the web and someone hotlinks to those images, I cannot claim “theft” of anything.

I still think you are at fault, given the context of your site. What bothers me is the theft of creativity without attribution. I assumed you had come up with that picture yourselves, and now I am left to wonder about some of the other pics you put up to accompany your posts. The other pictures he hotlinked don’t strike me as relevant, as they are just regular pictures.

> The IP doesn’t pay my hosting bills.
> The IP also makes many security attacks
> possible. That doesn’t make it right to
> attack someone.

Actually, IP is paying your bills. When you post content for which you get paid or get paid to create content by a third party, that “IP” is paying your hosting bills. That does not mean it was *meant* to pay them. That means you have devised a means by which you *can* get paid.

There is no “attack” here and to claim as such is ridiculous. DU is using the web as it was designed. You are upset because it ruins your little scheme to make money on the web. If you post content to the web, *expect* that it can be hotlinked.

I think most of the complaint was about the way it was handled by the admins here to be honest. Not the ‘hotlinking is the devil’ “no it isn’t” debate that has ensued.

Many people are using the creative commons license, the one I use most often is this:
nc/nd

nc
Noncommercial

The licensor permits others to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work. In return, licensees may not use the work for commercial purposes — unless they get the licensor’s permission.

nd
No Derivative Works

The licensor permits others to copy, distribute, display and perform only unaltered copies of the work — not derivative works based on it.

You can add the by licensing, which demands attribution every time. Will you get it? Who knows, I don’t even bother. At least if someone hotlinks to one of your images the person clicking on it will know where it came from.

It could be argued that the image hotlinked was used for commercial use as the site is ad supported, but I don’t really see it that way as the site’s more of a public forum. Others may see it differently.

As for blatant bandwidth thievery, it sucks! It sucks when someone finds a rare mp3 on your site and streams it on blogger 1000 times in a single week. If it becomes a problem, like it did for me, secure it. Everyone should secure their data if they want to have complete control over their content. Should it be the fault of the content owner if some random is going about and jacking your things? Is it a person’s fault if they leave their purse in their car and forget to lock it? If something is valuable, lock it up. People are thieves. That’s just the way it is, and no it doesn’t mean it’s right, but it is life.