Hi, I've done a search on the internet, and a few webmasters seem to think that it is. However, from reading their pages, they come across as angry individuals having a rant rather than guys who know what they're talking about. So... does anyone with legal experience know the answer to this? A lot of my bandwidth is being taken up with those image searches on MSN and Google, though I'm not really complaining (yet!). Regards, fcmisc.
People are using YOUR images on THEIR websites without giving you any compensation and they ALSO eat up YOUR traffic, therefore causing YOU monetary damages while THEY improve THEIR website and you don't think this is ILLEGAL?
This is not necessarily illegal, but it is bad, thats why most hosts and control panel enable HOTLINK PROTECTION, so people cant steal your bandwidth, but its always going to happen. If it were illegal, there would be no image hosting websites.
Copyright infringement and the monetary damages are certainly illegal. Image hosting websites have a different purpose, they don't own the images and they explicitly allow hotlinking.
Yes, but as there are no 'internet' police, you could easily take a picture, off of ebaumsworld for example, and link it to your website, without trouble
Sure you can "easily take a picture". Just as easily as you can commit other crimes. Doesn't make it legal.
If the picture is copyrighted- Illegal If not, I think it just falls under the 'extremelyunethical' category. Beware though, just because you hotlink to it doesnt mean they wont find out and change it to porn or an image that makes you very unprofessional.(an image that says "This site is ROBBING BANDWIDTH!!!", etc.)
I don't think it's illegal.... could someone point out a case that actually ended up in the hotlink-er getting in crap for it? ie: lawsuit or jailtime?
Hotlinking = linking to a image or file on someone's server. Stealing = taking that image and putting it on 'your' local server. Like I said, if someone can point out a case that went to court, or the hotlink-er got in some sort of legal case about it, i'll throw my hat down... till that happens.................
Just because something is bad doesn't mean its illegal. And hotlinking is not illegal, since I don’t think any law enforcement authority in the whole world has ever passed a law against hotlinking, lmfao.
So I can happily use images on my website if I only hotlink them and not "steal" them? You really think that Getty or whoever else would think that's not copyright infringement? Get this in your head: It's not about hotlinking ITSELF, it's about the use of the image. Hotlinking just adds monetary damages to the copyright infringement. If you don't think this is illegal, then let's think about this some more: You create a 10mb jpg file and I HOTLINK it from my super popular website that's getting 1 million page views per day. Let's say further that you pay 50 cents per gigabyte and all of a sudden you have additional expenses of $5.000 per day. If you don't think that gives me a legal reason to go after you you are simply dumb. So the scenario above is just BAD for you and not ILLEGAL? Alright, let's do this and we'll talk again after you had to pay $150k after a month just because I had to hotlink this image from your site, lmfao. And don't bother stating how ludicrous those numbers are, I am simply making a point.
Agree, not always is illegal display an image from another site on your own, but a thieving activity if it is hotlinked. People who hotlink is stealing bandwidth and system resources from those sites. While some people have loads of them, some webmasters find hards times paying their hosting services with limited resources to allow others just take them out.
Your good at namecalling and telling them what YOU believe, but where is the proof? Find it or don't tell people they are dumb, etc.
I don't give a crap as to whether you believe me or not. If you honestly believe that I can cause you monetary damages of $150k and steal all your images and you have no legal recourse for this, then that's your problem. FYI I never said that hotlinking is illegal in and of itself. However the consequences of it certainly are in most cases.
How does that make it illegal? I would be very annoyed obviously at the 150k bill lol, but that doesnt mean i can sue you, rofl.