Op-ed Stealing Bandwidth

[Black wallnut]

This has been discussed in years past. Embedding an image hosted on a third parties server is stealing bandwidth. In a recient topic one member posted a picture, not hosted here, not hosted on his own site, but hosted on the picture owner's site. Unknowingly every time someone views that page the viewer's browser has to go to the third site to retrieve the image. This is not fair on several different levels.

1. no credit given to the picture's owner (copyright infringement)
2. free advertising for the product
3. using bandwidth that someone else is paying for something that may or may not benefit them.

IMHO it is far better to either take and host, or upload your own images or post images as links if you do not own them or do not have permission to use them. To do anything else is stealing bandwidth!

[final_t]

Copying an exesting image from another site, and placing that copy on your own site (or flickr or photobucket etc) is also stealing - copyright infringement.

[LarryG]

I understand the rant and am in agreement, but just so I'm clear ... you're not talking about images hosted on third-party sites like Photobucket, right?

[Ken Massingale]

I agree, Mark, completely.
For me where it gets murky is linking to an image, say, on Woodcraft's site, to point members of this forum or another, to the product that they may purchase from Woodcraft. I don't have any heartburn about ding this.
Now, linking to an image on an individual's site, with limited bandwidth allowance, and that individual not receiving any benefit of the exposure of the image, is where I am in agreement with your point of view.

[Black wallnut]

I understand the rant and am in agreement, but just so I'm clear ... you're not talking about images hosted on third-party sites like Photobucket, right?

Correct. Yet that would be up to the "user agreement" that hosting sites have. In the past there have been some, Sony's Imagestation is one, that expressly forbid it. This is the main reason I started my own website.

[linear]

A long time ago, someone used one of my images in their ebay auction listing, hotlinked off my server as described in the OP.

Those of us who look at referrer logs spot this kind of thing pretty quick.

And it didn't take long to make an alternative version of the image for this guy to "improve" his listing.

[Black wallnut]

A long time ago, someone used one of my images in their ebay auction listing, hotlinked off my server as described in the OP.

Those of us who look at referrer logs spot this kind of thing pretty quick.

And it didn't take long to make an alternative version of the image for this guy to "improve" his listing.

Great solution! Well said! Pretty much sums up my point, bandwidth costs money regardless of whose it is, someone is paying for it. It's also simple to track.

[ironhat]

You know, for those of us not 'in the know' regarding this sort of thing, we should appreciate this information. It has become SOP to rip-off movies, music and copywrited material because the attitude is that it's not really stealing. But it is because those things (including online content) are products of someone's creativity and comprises their livelihood. Stealing banwidth is like stealing a ride on the back bumper of the bus. You use their gas to get a ride but you don't think you have to pay because you're not using a seat - or something like that.

Thanks - from now on, only web addresses, right?!
Chiz

[germdoc]

OK, I'm talking out of my bum here, but here goes...

If one were posting a "borrowed" image for commerical purposes, that would be wrong. Or downloading an image and using it without permission. If someone specifically notes an image is not to be used or linked to, it's improper to do that. But, I don't quite see the problem here.

First, there is rarely a bandwidth bottleneck. Who the bandwidth belongs to is an interesting question that would take up too much space here, but I think "hogging my bandwidth" is the least relevant argument. Second, people and sites post pictures to be looked at by as many people as possible. If the site is not subscription only, you are only doing what they intended--offering the picture for public viewing on their site. You're not moving the image or claiming it's yours. It's like pointing to a picture in a magazine or to a painting and saying "look at this". In other words, why does someone post an image on the web? To be seen by as many people as possible. (On a side note, can Britney claim that no one should publish naughty pictures of her when she's exhibiting exhibitionistic behavior? Just a thought...)

As best I can tell, it is not a violation of copyright law to link to a website or to a picture. There's also something called "fair use"--you can show a picture or use a quotation in a discussion (generally it should be attributed) without violating copyright law.

But, with the web and its complexities, who's to know? Let's not forget this is the "Inter"net--that means connectivity and linking, that is the beauty of the design.

If anyone has any learned information here, please let us know, but what I've read doesn't prove to me it's wrong to embed an image in this way with attribution.

[Black wallnut]

OK, I'm talking out of my bum here, but here goes...

If one were posting a "borrowed" image for commerical purposes, that would be wrong. Or downloading an image and using it without permission. If someone specifically notes an image is not to be used or linked to, it's improper to do that. But, I don't quite see the problem here.

I agree so far!

First, there is rarely a bandwidth bottleneck. snip

I do not agree! there have been many times when unexpected bandwidth usage has caused slowdowns of servers and even a few crashes! This is just well documented fact. Happens nearly every year during the holiday shopping season when someone has a killer web sale. Two ways to get a website uploaded: 1 own the server, or 2 buy server space. Either way the owner of the site is paying the bill. In example one the server has fixed data transfer capability and it costs to increase it. In example 2 every hosting agreement that I've ever read has a bandwidth limitation either as a cap or as a variable pricing structure if the site owner exceeds a certian level. The good part is many hosts offer reasonable plans where bandwidth never becomes an issue, yet the potential is there.

As best I can tell, it is not a violation of copyright law to link to a website or to a picture. There's also something called "fair use"--you can show a picture or use a quotation in a discussion (generally it should be attributed) without violating copyright law.

But, with the web and its complexities, who's to know? Let's not forget this is the "Inter"net--that means connectivity and linking, that is the beauty of the design.

If anyone has any learned information here, please let us know, but what I've read doesn't prove to me it's wrong to embed an image in this way with attribution.

There is no violation for linking.

It's the last part that I take the most issue with. Attribution makes a world of difference, but I have seen where some websites that gladly give away thier content for others to use also demand that users download/upload the code, file, or image to their own web space. Without being specific on which post I last read where I noticed this there was an image, hosted elsewhere with no attribution, no acknowledgement of ownership, no "image from", no statement to the effect of ".....like this one pictured from ABC Inc, their picture btw haha..... Just an image, hosted elsewhere and not by the poster.

Just because it happens all the time does not make it right. The two times where it really bothers me is 1, and this has happened to me, when some one quotes the content of a whole webpage, posts it into a forum and does not credit the source. 2 posting images hosted by another without credit given to source. In #2 it's twice wrong IMO fisrt copywrite violation, second bandwidth theft. The owner of the image and site hosting the image may or may not be getting his image used in a way or for a purpose that he posted the image for. Sometimes, perhaps even most of the time this is no big deal especially if all the image/ site owner is looking for traffic. The question is, however, is that traffic serving the purpose that he has bought webspace for? In this case I truely doubt it!

[linear]

BW's response sums it up nicely.

Bandwidth is one of the principal cost components of running a web site. Most providers will bill you if you exceed the allotment your plan covers. So an image hotlinked on a busy site can cost the unsuspecting webmaster money.

On the second point, I have granted explicit permission to use my images to everyone who has ever asked first. It's the not asking part that bugs me.

I also block certain sites from ever being the referring host for any of my images. Generally, these fall into two categories: a) they make me pay a fee to even see the page on which they use my image (not going to happen) or b) my image appears in an objectionable context.

The most common case by far for my images being hotlinked is in community sites just like this one (but on different topics usually). In almost every case, I register on that board and thank everyone for visiting, thank whoever linked to me, and provide a link to the page that the image sits on if that wasn't part of the original post. 99 out of 100 times it's a positive thing when someone links to you, it's just that there are situations where it's unwelcome as noted above.

I wrote a small calculator a long time ago in Javascript and put it on a web page on my site for all to use. Being as it is Javascript, it was trivial to view the source code, you just viewed the source of the page it was on, and you had the entire thing. I placed comments in the source that asserted my copyright, and explicitly informed people to ask for permission to use my code. My copyright notice also appeared on the page itself, plainly visible in the browser.

Would it surprise you to learn that this script was widely plagiarized? (The new version runs server-side, so you can't rip it off no matter how bad you want to. Lesson learned.)

[footprintsinconc]

huh?

i am completely lost, and i thought that i understood computers to a certain degree.

my question is, can anyone of us who try to past a picture into our post here make this mistake without knowing? can someone explain what is happening in really plain english and more detail?

thanks

[linear]

This is a concern when you use the [img] tag.

If you don't either a) control the site the image is hosted on (pay the bill), or b) have explicit permission to use the image on that site in other contexts, then it's bad etiquette at the very least to post that image. Instead, place a link to the image, or better yet the page on which you found it. That way the webmaster that offers the world that image is at least afforded a chance to place it in the context of his/her choosing.

Photo sharing sites would fall under b, as would images you upload to this site for sharing. If a) applies to you, you will know, because you are (in general) paying a bill to make it happen.

If you look at any of my images (in any of my posts), you'll see they generally live on linear1.org, which I operate. So my images largely fall under a. If you upload images as attachments to your post, they fall under b, Sam has allowed you to use this site to share that image.

[linear]

Good etiquette:

Hey look at this cool site I found, this crazy guy stuck a plasma globe in his PC! What a bozo!
http://case-mods.linear1.org/plasma-globe-mod/

Bad etiquette:

Hey, this crazy guy stuck a plasma globe in his PC! What a bozo!

[Alex Franke]

Here's my US$0.02:

An image is just like an HTML file or any other resource on the Web. Anything that's hot-linkable is a publicly accessible resource -- it can be retrieved with a URL -- no matter what kind of resource it is. If I put any resource on the web that is publicly accessible via a URL, then it's pretty clear that I don't mind if that resource is being retrieved -- that's what the Web is all about. Nobody's stealing my bandwidth if they're accessing a resource I make available on the Web.

So let's take "image" out of the picture completely (pun intended ). We're talking about resources, which could be just about anything.

If I DON'T want a resource to be retrieved the way the Web was designed to work (hypertext), then I should take action to protect it. On Apache, I can use .htaccess, or on IIS I can use LinkDeny, etc. I believe this is my responsibility as a content publisher, and I take similar protective steps with resources, for example, that should only be downloaded after they're purchased.

Or, if I want to let the Web work the way it was designed to work, I should use some other means of protecting the images -- like branding them. For example, I like to overlay my web address on the images so people know where they came from.

The resource is mine and it's on a site and I control, so I can always change it if I want. This happened recently to a rather famous politician, who was hot-linking an image. The image owner changed the image to say something to the effect of "I'm particularly fond of lesbians" (which he was not). The owner of the resource did nothing wrong, and the politician paid the price because if he wanted control of the image he should have been using his own.

What I DO take issue with is someone using one of my resources as if it were their own, or claiming/implying ownership of it or rights to it. If you use MY resources on YOUR page that says, "All resources are (c)..." then I have a problem with that because you're claiming or implying that my resource is your own. That's plagerism. If you download the resource, re-upload it to your server (or attach it to a forum post), that's copyright infringement because you've violated my exclusive right to reproduce it.

If my resource appears on a forum post out of the blue, and no one's claiming ownership of it, then that's perfectly fine. If I didn't want it to appear, I can rename it, remove it, or change it to my heart's desire. No problem. But still nobody's stealing my bandwidth. In this case, I'm happy I still have control of it and my exclusive right to reproduce it is still intact.

Think of it this way: If you have a store and an image of Jesus appears on the wall, you may find that suddenly you've got thousands of people staring in your window. If you don't like it, paint over the image or draw a curtain in front of it. They're not stealing anything by looking in the window. They will be infringing on your rights, however, if they say it is their own or prohibit you from covering it.

Hotlink this all you want, but don't you dare change it or remove the copyright notice: =)