Hotlinking aka Direct Linking
- and why it is wrong and rude
Hotlinking is when someone links to an image on another server - for example:
On this website, www.aaaaa.com, the pictures would usually have a similar url, like www.aaaaa.com/picture/mypic.jpg.
Hotlinking is if the picture is fetched from someone elses website instead. The pictures would then have this url:
www.ooooo.com/pictures/mypic.jpg.
This means that the owner of www.ooooo.com is billed for the traffic each time someone views the picture on www.aaaaa.com - and that is very close to stealing - making someone else bear the expense for showing the picture on a website not his own.
People tend to do it a lot in livejournals and forums - and now and again, one finds a website where ALL the pictures are hotlinked - GRRRRRR.
I prefer to think the best of people, so I think people hotlink mostly out of ignorance, and this page will try to do away with that ignorance.
I have no problem with people using my images for personal use, but please don't use my images on other websites without my EXPRESS PERMISSION. If you ask permission, I will probably let you use my images on your own website (credit and linkbacks are nice).
All images are copyright the original owners, but I have spent money, and more importantly, a LOT of time, to make the images for my website.
To get the images, I go through the movie/episode several times - one of them at 25% speed and specific scenes frame by frame, and often ending up with 2000 images from a 45 minute episode. Sorting out the fuzzy ones, and then then deciding on which 40-60 pictures to use out of the remaining pictures takes time. The final task of optimizing the pictures, making thumbnails and html takes time too.
But I WILL NOT let you use my images, still placed on my own website, on your own website, in forums and livejournals and elsewhere.
I pay for the bandwidth used by visitors to my website, and I definitely don't want to pay for someone else using my images and bandwidth.
I check my access log now and then, and when I find hotlinks, I might :
A
Try to contact the webmaster, write in the guestbook, write to the forum and ask that they stop hotlinking, wait a few days and see if they stop. If not, I go to step B or C
B
It's not always possible to contact the hotlinkers. In that case, I will rename my image, so all that shows up on the forum/website is a red X - like this:
C
Or if I'm really bored, I might change the picture instead - like this
I've seen one of my images used as an icon on a board - the picture was shown as 100 x 100 pixels - but the person was using the large 55 kb version of my image to do it!
Icon images are usually around 2-5 kb!
An entry in my log may look like this:
218.145.25.83 - - [01/Feb/2004:16:59:04 +0100] "GET /dacascos/cf45w.jpg HTTP/1.0" 200 32956 "http://board2.hanmir.com/blue/Board.cgi?path=db98&db=ultraneos&cmd=list&field=Subj&findstr=樨毢&page=1" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)"
So I need to rename the cf45w.jpg image.
If I need additional confirmation, I can right-click the image and check properties. If the urls at each end of the arrow are not the same, there's hotlinking happening.
My first websites were not written to make picture protection easy, but as soon as I have recamped the HTML, I hope to be able to put a stop to most hotlinking.
I hate it when sites disable right-click, so I won't do that - besides, it's usually fairly easy to get around it, so I'm trying something different.
Read more about hotlinking