What is Direct or Hot Linking?

FYI - What is direct or hot linking?

Bandwidth theft or "hotlinking" is direct linking to a web site's files (images, video, mp3s, etc.). An example would be using an <img> tag to display a jpg or gif image you found on someone else's web page so it will appear on your own site, eBay auction listing, weblog, forum message post, etc.

Bandwidth refers to the amount of data transferred from a web site to a user's computer. When you view a web page, you are using that site's bandwidth to display the files. Since web hosts charge based on the amount of data transferred, bandwidth is an issue. If a site goes over its monthly bandwidth, it's billed for the extra data or taken offline.

A simple analogy for bandwidth theft: imagine a random stranger plugging into your electrical outlets, using your electricity without your consent, and you paying for it.

If you were to hotlink an image from an outside server, the HTML might look like this:
<img src="http://notmysite.com/image.jpg" height="350" width="200">

This tag tells the site to request the image.jpg from a different server other than your own. Every time the page is loaded, the outside server has to use its bandwidth to display the image. To avoid this problem, don't link to files on servers that clearly ask you not to. To share images and files on your own web page, upload them to your own server's directory or to a free image hosting service that allows direct linking.
Free Image Hosting for you
Pic Server,Village Photos,Walagata,Photobucket

Hotlinking can have a lot of undesirable consequences. One is the so-called "switcheroo". If you've linked to an image on someone's server, what's to prevent them from changing the image you linked to? Since most sites, forums, etc. have strict policies about offensive images, it wouldn't take much for an aggravated webmaster you've been stealing bandwidth from to shut you down completely with a "switcheroo". I can and will do this.

Displaying an image or file that doesn't belong to you could be a violation of copyright, making you open to litigation. The owner of the file could utilize DMCA law to have your site shut down and your information given for use in legal proceedings.

So, please do not direct link my images from ANY of my sites. I will come after you, I mean it. Thank you.

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