Hotlinking

[Rock26]

I was in a thread, "Paths of the Dead Clip" or something like that, and the link was deleted because it was "hotlinked." For those of us BARELY computer literate who probably do this without knowing, what is the definition of hotlinking and how do we avoid it? On behalf of all of us BCL (see above) ringers, I humbly thank you in advance.

[Illuvatar]

Not a problem.....

I found a good description over at whatis.com and fitted it to our needs. This should help.

Hotlinking is not only bad netiquette, it's theft. Hotlinking to an image steals bandwidth.

What is bandwidth?

Bandwidth is to websites what gasoline is to cars. It's what powers them and enables them to be seen on your computer monitor. Every time you go to a website and look at a page, all the little images and words that are stored on that site's server get sent through cyberspace to your computer. Bandwidth is the energy used to send those images and words. Every time you look at something on a website, it uses up a little bit of that site's bandwidth.

Most sites only get a certain amount of bandwidth (measured in gigabytes) per month, and if they go over their allowance, the site either shuts down for the rest of the month, or the owner of the website has to pay for any bandwidth over and above their allowable limit.

What is hotlinking?

Hotlinking is linking to an image on someone else's server.

Let's say you're over at the lordoftherings.com , and you decide that you need to post a picture of Legolas and his fabulous hair. So you go over to lordoftherings.com , and you find a picture of Loggy's hair that you really like.

If you right-click on that picture, save it to your computer, upload it to your own personal webspace, and then put *your* URL in the img tags on the message board, you are a good kid and should get a cookie.

If you right-click the URL for that picture at lordoftherings.com and paste it into your img tags at the message board, you are stealing thier bandwidth.

See, every time someone looks at that thread, and that picture of Leggy's hair loads onto their computer monitor, it's being sent from my server. Using their bandwidth.

Posting a link to an image is not the same as hotlinking. If you post the URL for the image so that people can click on it and see the picture you're referring to, that's fine. If you actually make the image appear in your post, using a www.lordoftherings.com URL, that's hotlinking.

The same goes with video files, etc.

If you link to the page where it is on, then that is fine as they get the hits because the link takes you to their site. Linking directly to the video file is wrong. The ABC special and 9 minutes of footage had to come down not only due to demand, but also do to folks hotlinking to it when it was in the downloads database.

Hope this helps...hehe

[Fatty]

Hi Rock, hotlinking is when you post a link to a file directly on someone else's server or site. Like http://www.somesite.com/movie.avi

Rather than the page they might have it on like http:www.somesite.com/moviepages.html

Essentially you are using their bandwidth to server the file from the site you post the link on without visiting the persons site.

Not only does it cost them visitors but also cash.

It is also a crime and classified in the law as theft. We lose about $400 a month to hotlinkers showing images and files hsoted on our server internally on their own sites.

It might seem harmless someone posting some images on a little forum. But times it by 300 and you have a problem. We have trouble enough keeping wotr afloat without people leeching our resources.

That is the reason we frown upon it when people do it on the forum to other sites.

I hope that helps explain it. :-)

Regards

Fatty

[Rock26]

Thanks Illu and Fatty. Not sure I understand all the technical jargon, ( I am one of those people at work that when IT tries to walk me through something on my computer, it always ends with "Oh, just get out of the way.") eg URL, "personal webspace" (do I have personal webspace? Cool. :grin: ) however, that tells me enough to at least avoid being a violator, I think. I'm sure everyone has more to do than to give me a "computer terminology 101" lecture, so thanks again for the explanation. I've gotten all I need. :thumbs:

P.S. Your site rocks. Keep up the great work!!

[Bonos-Girl]

the URL is the web adress...for example http://www.warofthering.net. pictures also have URLS they'll be www.yourdomain.com/picture.jpg or something like that usually. using the URLs and bbcode or HTML you can put the picture in the post you made without actually linking to their site. make sense or is this anotherexample of my bad explaining skillls? lol

[Rock26]

Thanks, BG. Yes that helps. Do I fully understand it, no. But was there any hope of that? Only a fool's hope. roflmao C-ya!