Is it ethical to link another site

[Ole]

Calm down please, folks - or this thread will follow the LFforum.info-thread into oblivion.

Or maybe it should do that anyway?

[Nicole]

A hotlink is unethical. I love Cheryl Jacobs site who threatens to 'spank anyone and send them to bed without supper' that violates her copyright. (I wish I had thought of that one).

I do have many sites that link to mine and am flattered by those that do.

[Jorge]

A hotlink is unethical. I love Cheryl Jacobs site who threatens to 'spank anyone and send them to bed without supper' that violates her copyright. (I wish I had thought of that one).

I do have many sites that link to mine and am flattered by those that do.

Just for the record, I dont mind someone placing a link to any of my pictures, that is fine, but hot linking is absolutely out of bounds IMO.

[Mongo]

The best defense to hotlinking is to replace the hotlinked image with something that makes the hotlinker look like an idiot. Unfortunately, Jorge's images were not hotlinked from a site that he controls, so he didn't have that option. But I've seen some really great eBay auctions over the years, where someone hotlinked to a picture that the owner then replaced with the most amazing stuff. (One in partiuclar sticks in my mind...someone was selling motherboards and hotlinked to a series of pictures on another web site. The website owner replaced the pictures of the motherboards on his site with pictures of motherboards on fire, broken into pieces, etc. Great stuff!)

As to the discussion on the other site, all I can say is that Jorge was not only within his rights to complain that his image was hotlinked without his permission or the permission of the owner of the site from which the image was taken, but also that Jorge did a masterful job of re-directing the conversation from being about Jorge's talents as a printer (which, in my opinion, are beyond reproach) to a discussion about hotlinking.

Just my opinion folks...feel free to put me on your ignore lists if you want.

[Curt]

This is easy to solve. Read the book; "The Fountain Head".
"No man has a right to another mans work"
"The creator has the sole right of ownership to that work"

[laz]

This is easy to solve. Read the book; "The Fountain Head".

So you think Jorge should blow up the website at which his hotlinked photo appeared!!!!

(you have to have read the book)

[Dan Fromm]

Calm down please, folks - or this thread will follow the LFforum.info-thread into oblivion.

Or maybe it should do that anyway?

Well, for the most part this thread is a string of complaints about a problem that can't be fixed. Venting, in a word. Perhaps its useful.

[Michael Slade]

The best defense to hotlinking is to replace the hotlinked image with something that makes the hotlinker look like an idiot.

This very exact thing happnes to me all the time. When I find the link I initially will send a polite e-mail requesting the infringer to cease-and-desist. If I recieve no action I'll send an e-mail to the web-site admin. No action still? I take matters into my own hands...much as Mongo has mentioned.

You can read about my last episode here:

http://www.pirate4x4.com/forum/showt...ight=copyright

Usually I don't have to go this far.

Copyright is a very tender issue for me. I just spent the last 2 1/2 years of my life and upwards of $15,000 defending it against a company who was using an image of mine illegally. The case settled before we went to court, and I won.

[juan]

Exchanging the photo doesn't solve the problem of stolen bandwidth - the new photo will probably use as much bandwidth as the replaced, hot-linked photo. If the hotlink causes you to exceed your allowed bandwidth, as was the case with my site, you'll still exceed bandwidth.

My new host has a feature that prevents hotlinking, so I have taken advantage of that. Looking in stats, I can still see the hotlinks, but they are no longer using my bandwidth.
juan

[Mongo]

Exchanging the photo doesn't solve the problem of stolen bandwidth...

It can lessen the problem if you make the right image...something like "I hotlinked someone elses image and now they replaced it with this message...aren't I a moron?" at 100x100 in simple black text on a white background can get down to around 1K as a very low quality JPG, and will still make the hotlinker look like a jerk. Of course, you can also just rename the image file so that all of his pictures show up as broken links.

I know it's best just to set things up so that people can't hotlink...but I love the idea of screwing around with someone whom I'd consider a thief just based on his or her actions. Sometimes I'm just too cynical...