I love using pictures to spruce up my blog entries and I’m lucky enough to have a server I can host my images on. If I didn’t have my own server I would use something like Flickr.
Every time someone views one of my entries it consumes bandwidth on the link my server is connected to and this bandwidth costs money. Every provider sets a limit on the amount of web traffic a server uses and then charges additional fees if you exceed that limit. I rarely exceed my limit so it’s usually no big deal.
When someone takes one of my pictures and hotlinks it at their site this increases the amount of traffic my server experiences, thus increasing the amount of bandwidth it uses. There’s the traffic that is intended for me combined with whatever their traffic is. Usually it’s not all that much. Principal offenders are Myspace users who snag an image and use it to post a comment to one of their friends.
This brings me to my rant. Last night I noticed repeated log entries from savemartcenter.com, the web site for the Savemart Center at Fresno State which is a large concert/sports venue similar to The Toyota Center or the old Summit. It turns out that they had hot-linked to an image on MY SERVER! No credit, not asking permission, they just posted it on the main site as if they owned it.
The image in question is a promo picture of the Blue Man Group I used in one of my posts. You can see it in this screen capture:
Since the image is on my server I can change it to whatever I want and it will show up on their web site:
Of course, I recognize that this response was juvenile so I changed it to this and sent them an e-mail requesting they remove the link:
I can excuse hot-linking in the cases of my friends and even the Myspace users who just don’t know any better but I have to assume the webmaster for Savemart Center is passing themselves off and being paid as a professional.
*EDIT*
They have now removed the hot-linked image from their site.
You shoulda replaced it with the goatse.cx guy.
I am super bad about hotlinking. Please don’t hate on me for it! I just do it in my LJ and stuff. I know it’s bad of me, but I just can’t help myself sometimes!
I know lots of websites make it so that you can’t hotlink from them. You should set it up like that and stuff.
Yeah, the text was a better answer. Even hosting a copy of Jim Marshall’s picture of Johnny Cash without permission is pretty slimy, and not any better than the original offending webmaster.
That doesn’t mean the webmaster stopped hotlinking practically every other graphic on that page! Everything but the banner and the images found in their “Next On Stage” section have been hotlinked… even the sport team logos on the left are hotlinked. What a shmuck!
Hot linking is rude. There are places like Imageshack that will host your image for free! Please use it!
The only thing worse than hotlinks is when someone takes your image then manipulates (changed the color of my car from red to blue) and then blames it on on some photo clearing house. FYYCS! is all I could muster without hiring a lawyer.
fred
ps If you need a transalation of thos thos words just email me.
Jay Lee,
That is just too funny! I applaud ya!
[...] have spoken before on the topic of “hot-linking” [...]
[...] have spoken before in my personal blog on the topic of “hot-linking” [...]
[...] To be fair, this was likely accomplished by manipulating the image ID in the URL and was never posted like this on the actual Walmart site. Still, bad webmastering exploited in such a manner is rather humorous. Much like when someone hotlinks to your hosted image and you just swap the image for something more … [...]
Holy crap on a cracker (sorry, had to say it, too). That’s an awesome use of the man in black swapped for the men in blue.
I have to apologize jay, i’ve hotlinked your “you’ve got spyware” image a couple of times
but they were in reference to tech bytes radio show being on, and encouraging someone having an issue to call in
i have flickr can i copy the image there?
[...] Just ask the (hopefully ex-) Webmaster @ Savemart Center what can happen when you do something so inconsiderate. [...]