Posting hotlinked images

mjm3346

Previously we were told this

"Due to some complaints we have received, we'd like to remind all users that hotlinking to images on other websites may cause that site huge bandwidth problems. In the interest of maintaining good relations with competition providers, please try not to link in this way"

does this still apply now that it has been made so easy to just drop an image into a post?

thingamaBob

Is there an answer to this? Has the hotlinking policy changed? Seems to be quite a lot of it going on now. 

One-Eye

The original restriction quoted my mjm3346 dates from 2009 when bandwidth was much more of a problem than now. The policy seemed to be eased a bit in 2010 when this appeared.

MSE_Alana

Hi folks,
I just want to clarify our position on hotlinking, if we get complaints from the company hosting the picture we will obviously take the posts down, otherwise if they aren't causing a drain on their resources they are fine to be left up.
I hope that helps.
MSE Alana

There have been a few discussions since then but no official comment.
In a 2012 discussion on this topic I made the following comment which still stands:

The use of hotlinked images is problematical in several ways, the main ones being:
1) It is bandwidth theft. Photo hosting sites are set up to do the job but some smaller sites are not set up to download images to thousands of users who are not even using their website. This is the source of complaints to MSE.
2) The image is not controlled by the poster. The third party website may delete the image, or even worse change it, possibly to something inappropriate.
(some of you may remember that I did this to a site who was copying MSE comp posts - I waited until they had copied one of my posts before deleting the post from MSE and changing the picture to something inviting them to go forth and fornicate)

In summary:
It is a normal part of the forum's procedures to create hotlinks, and it is OK to do so until the host complains, but it still has its potential problems.

markin

As most sites have hotlink protection, Anyone reading the forum Hrs or a day later may not see the photos.