Hotlinks are very uncool.
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| ComputerBob Apr 26, 2009 8:38 AM EDT |
This blog entry hotlinks to 107 photographs on the original site that it mentions. Skip the blog and go right to the original site at: http://oldcomputers.net/index.html |
| eggi Apr 26, 2009 11:47 PM EDT |
Sorry, Bob, Just thought it would be nice for people to be able to click the picture of the computer they were interested in and get sent straight to the information page for that computer. I couldn't get the page to embed in the Blogspot post. There is a link to that entire page in the text above the pictures as well. Thanks, Mike |
| eggi Apr 27, 2009 12:06 AM EDT |
FOLLOW UP - Bob, I owe you an apology. I just went and double checked the link above the photos and it goes (went) to the main page that the photos get loaded under. I've updated that so it goes directly to the pics.html page, like it was supposed to. I've also added this to the top of the post: EDIT - 4/26/09 - Thanks to ComputerBob at LXer for pointing out that the link to the main picture page was incorrect. It has been fixed :) If you would like that removed, just let me know. Wanted to credit you for finding the mistake and being good enough to point it out. Thanks, again :) , Mike |
| ComputerBob Apr 27, 2009 12:18 PM EDT |
Mike, The point of my comment had nothing to do with any of your blog's links being incorrect. My point was that you were -- and are still now -- hotlinking to 107 photos from that other site. I understand why you think that you should do it, but it's still wrong to do it. If you don't understand what hotlinking is, please see the Wikipedia article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotlink If you don't understand why hotlinking is wrong, a quick Google search for the terms "hotlink" and "wrong" will show you plenty of reasons. |
| caitlyn Apr 27, 2009 4:40 PM EDT |
Well... I, for one, appreciated the post. The use of hotlinks in this case is benign and harmless. No sense in making such an issue out of it. I hate to admit how many of those computers I recognized and how many I owned way back when. |
| ComputerBob Apr 27, 2009 9:49 PM EDT |
@caitlyn,
That's easy for you to say. I understand that it's no big deal to you, but I don't agree. You have the right to your opinion, but millions of people like me who have their own web sites know that hotlinking is neither benign nor harmless. Of course, you're free to disagree with me. But, as a person who has spent tens of thousands of hours creating my sites for free over more than the past decade, and who has always paid for all of them out of my own pocket, I've never considered it to be benign or harmless when people have taken my work and leeched my bandwidth to drive traffic to their blogs. |
| jdixon Apr 27, 2009 10:21 PM EDT |
> Of course, you're free to disagree with me. Good, because I do. Vehemently. > I wouldn't consider it benign and harmless if someone took my work and leeched my sites' bandwidth to drive traffic to their blog. They not taking your work. They're directing their readers straight to the aspects of your work they like and they think their readers might like. Yes, it uses your bandwidth, but the alternative is to copy your work onto their own site, which would be taking it. Of course, if you don't want someone linking directly to links on your site there's a simple solution: Don't make them linkable from outside your site. Allowing them to be linkable from outside your site is an invitation to link to them. That's the way the web works. |
| tuxchick Apr 27, 2009 10:22 PM EDT |
CB, I wish I had kept a screen grab of the page a friend of mine used to foil hotlinkers. She was plagued by MySpace twits hotlinking her images and plagiarizing her articles, so she came up with this slick regex that re-directed hotlinks and referrals from MySpace to a special page. It was a magic JPG that was just a few bytes on her server, but rendered out to several megabytes. Hardly any bandwidth penalty to her, and a big one to the MySpace dorks. One MySpace user in particular-- Jake the Jake-- persisted in spite of her clever countermeasures, so she made a special page just for Jake the Jake and his fiance Rachel. It was a nude photo of a very under-endowed man, just the under-endowed part, and flowery script asking "Rachel will you marry me?" That finally got his attention. Yes, hotlinking is rude. And if your victim gets mad enough, it can also be very embarrassing :) |
| ComputerBob Apr 27, 2009 10:24 PM EDT |
A few years ago, I began using .htaccess on my sites to prevent hotlinking. But if I don't lock my car, it may make it easier for you to steal it, but it doesn't give you the right to steal it. I can hardly believe that anyone is actually defending hotlinking, as though it is a good thing. @tuxchick - I've heard of people doing that type of thing, but I've never had the guts to actually do it myself. ;) |
| jdixon Apr 27, 2009 10:29 PM EDT |
> I can hardly believe that anyone is actually defending hotlinking, as though it is a good thing. It's neither a good thing nor a bad thing. It's the way the web works. As I said, if you don't want people linking to your material, block it. Otherwise you've given them an invitation by making the material linkable. |
| gus3 Apr 27, 2009 10:33 PM EDT |
WWSTBLS? (What Would Sir Tim Berners-Lee Say?) |
| tuxchick Apr 27, 2009 10:36 PM EDT |
jdixon and caitlyn, do you understand what hotlinking is? It's not a simple referral like on LXer, which drives traffic directly to sites and they benefit from it. LXer does not take credit for the articles or try to pass them off as its own. Hotlinking is displaying images from another site on your site without actually hosting them. It's very easy because the img src tag takes any URL, it doesn't care if you host the images, or if they are on a remote server. So you get all the benefit, while the originating site pays for the bandwidth and hosting, and won't even know about it if they don't keep an eagle eye on their logs. Sometimes you will see a site that expressly gives permission for hotlinking, but most admins consider it to be unfriendly and thieving, and don't like to be surprised by overlimit bandwidth or hosting charges. Hotlinking can be perilous as Jake the Jake discovered, because the admin of the site you're poaching from has control of the images, and can change them anytime. This is a good explanation: http://altlab.com/hotlinking.html |
| jdixon Apr 27, 2009 11:07 PM EDT |
> Hotlinking is displaying images from another site on your site without actually hosting them. An image which, in this case at least, is a direct link to the relevant article on the site in question, and is attributed as being from that site. I agree that solely presenting the image without attribution is wrong, if that's what you want, as that's effectively copyright infringement. Even fair use requires attribution. However, that is not the definition of hotlinking as I know it. The definition as I'm familiar with it is any embedded image or text which links directly to another location. You're using a much narrower definition that the one I'm used to. And none of this changes that it's still the way the web works, and if you don't want someone doing it, it's up to you to prevent it. Otherwise it's assumed to be allowed by he very fact of you making the material available. |
| caitlyn Apr 27, 2009 11:25 PM EDT |
I think jdixon made all the points I wanted to make so no need to repeat. I agree that this isn't hotlinking as most would define it and I still believe it's basically benign. The source attribution is there. This isn't an attempt at palgiarism. It's a set of photographic links is all. Oh, and yes, this is the way the web works. |
| ComputerBob Apr 28, 2009 6:52 AM EDT |
>"And none of this changes that it's still the way the web works, and if you don't want someone doing it, it's up to you to prevent it. Otherwise it's assumed to be allowed by he very fact of you making the material available." Interesting concept -- victims cause crime. So anyone who knows your address is free to go to your house and take your stuff, and if you don't want them to do that, it's your responsibility to keep them from doing it. After all , that's the way the world works. And its OK with you, as long as they tell everybody else where you live. I suggest that you do some research on the topic of "fair use." Fair use is applicable only in very specific situations, involves only small amounts of material, and does not condone hotlinking, of any type. |
| tuxtom Apr 28, 2009 10:08 AM EDT |
ComputerBob: Your insurance company isn't gonna like it when you tell them you left the doors unlocked and the keys in the ignition of your stolen car...or maybe you were going to attempt to hide that little detail in your charade of self righteousness. Right or wrong, there is an onus on the content publisher to minimize their damages. Poor administration practices can cause a lot of damages. Good administration minimizes losses. It would be interesting to see a full accounting of what loss has been incurred....especially these days when bandwidth is dirt cheap. Yeah, back in the day that bandwidth might have hurt, but not any more. If you choose to be a victim that is your prerogative. No matter how "right" you may be, in the grand scheme of things no one really cares. "...that's the way the web works." |
| theboomboomcars Apr 28, 2009 11:17 AM EDT |
I don't understand what the problem with this instance of hotlinking is. The pictures are just links to the page where the information comes from. The author is advertising the destination page with their own materials. |
| gus3 Apr 28, 2009 12:13 PM EDT |
In the name of research, I have viewed the page. HTML size: 20.58K 107 images, averaging around 12-14K each: 1284 to 1498K. For every 21K of file data transferred for this pageview, over a megabyte of file data comes from another site. Mike, you really should copy these images to your own site and adjust the image source URL's. EDIT: Changed "bandwidth" to "file data". Once TCP/IP and endpoint networking are factored in, those figures go up by roughly 10%. |
| jdixon Apr 28, 2009 1:33 PM EDT |
> So anyone who knows your address is free to go to your house and take your stuff, and if you don't want them to do that, it's your responsibility to keep them from doing it. After all , that's the way the world works. Actually, that's completely correct. That's why there are locks on doors. The fact that it's both illegal and wrong is somewhat beside the point, and hotlinking (even as defined above) has not been defined as illegal, and it's questionable as to whether it's wrong. As I already noted in an earlier thread, the only reason for placing information on a publicly available web server is to allow the public to access it. There is no other obvious reason to do so, so it's reasonable for someone to assume that's the case. The only reason for making that information linkable is to allow people to link to it. Again, there's no other obvious reason to do so, so it's reasonable for someone to assume that's the case. If either of those aren't case, then it's the responsibility of the person putting the information up to make sure those options aren't available. The web is designed to make information available and linkable by default. If that's not what you want, then don't use it or change the defaults. |
| tuxchick Apr 28, 2009 2:09 PM EDT |
jdixon, having a public Web site doesn't mean license to abuse it however you wish to. It is indisputable that hotlinking, unless expressly permitted, has long been considered a bad thing to do. gus spelled it out very clearly-- Eggi is getting the benefit of the pageviews without paying for the bandwidth. Giving the originating site credit is nice, but it doesn't change that fact. You're stretching 'making that information linkable' beyond the breaking point when you use it to justify hotlinking. Hotlinking is not something a site visitor does; it's something done by other Webmasters to use your material, and making you pay the hosting and bandwidth costs. You have to jump through several hoops to hotlink; it's not a casual, thoughtless act. Sure, web admins have to armor their sites beyond belief to prevent mischief and abuses, and it's an escalating war. It doesn't change that certain practices are considered hostile, and by custom are frowned upon, and it is reasonable to expect that other admins of good manners and conscience won't do them. |
| jdixon Apr 28, 2009 9:39 PM EDT |
> jdixon, having a public Web site doesn't mean license to abuse it however you wish to. Linking, even hotlinking, is not abuse. It's the way the web was designed to work. > ...has long been considered a bad thing to do. There's a far piece between "bad thing to do" and the way many folks here are reacting. Personally, I'd say that at most it is impolite to do without asking, and I'm not so sure about that. > It doesn't change that certain practices are considered hostile, and by custom are frowned upon... Again, it's a long way from "are frowned upon" to "are considered hostile". |
| gus3 Apr 28, 2009 10:08 PM EDT |
jdixon, I know from personal experience that having an LXer article lead to a website can easily generate over 1,000 hits in a day. In this case, that would translate to over a gigabyte in graphics data transferred from a third-party site. Unquestionably, that's "hostile." Not merely "impolite" or "frowned upon." Your nit-pick of tc's words do not change the point. |
| eggi Apr 28, 2009 10:37 PM EDT |
Hello all, Tuxchick - you know me well enough - Get ready for another novel ;) I took a good hour and a half and read all the replies to this thread. Maybe that's overkill. Anyway, I gave them consideration and read the links to the "What is Hotlinking?", etc, sites. Following are my thoughts and the steps I've taken: 1. When I first started my blog, I actually did the opposite of hotlinking, but found that (much like in this instance), some folks who have publicly available websites and no disclaimers indicating that prior permission was required before republishing (assuming they mean theft) would get irked and send me emails indicating so. These disputes were all easily settled since I "always" give full attribution to any author or site that I may showcase, if I found their site and thought it would be something my readers would enjoy. Usually, a pointer to the blog page would be sufficient to settle the question of whether I was attempting to co-opt the benefits of their hard work. 2. After a certain amount of time, I decided to go the other way and link directly to the material, while also giving full attribution (thinking - win/win) and was well aware that, some day, that linked-to material would most likely be gone or replaced with something else. I chalked that up to the cost of tending my garden. Up to this post, also, I've only linked to 4 or 5 pictures or a video in a single post (nothing of this scale). Some folks appreciate it, but that may be because they don't get a lot of traffic and the redirect through my site brings them new (possibly remaining) readers. 3. After reading the debate above, I must admit that I agree with the logic of both sides (I won't address the analogues, because I think it would just further confuse the issue). One term I noted (on one of the offsite links) was that hotlinking is considered "bandwidth theft." The argument above made sense in this context since each view of my page serves up a large amount of content from the main site's page. 4. It was never my intent to harm the oldcomputers.net site. I enjoyed it and wanted to share it with others. My thinking was that I was doing the correct thing by linking to the site and giving attribution, such that I wouldn't be accused of some ham-fisted attempt at fronting another person's site content as my own. I write plenty of my own stuff (and lots of it. This is but a taste ;) - it wouldn't make sense for me to lift. I'd always considered theft in the context of actual content stealing (I've found a few of my original posts word-for-word copied using copyscape, and I find that practice beyond any defense, insulting and kind of pathetic... I would have more sympathy if the lifters had "at least" reworded my posts) 5. So, I find myself in a quandary. On the one hand, I appreciate the support from folks who look at it the way I did initially and can see, by visiting the page, that I'm not attempting to steal bandwidth from oldcomputers.net or harm them in any way. My blog has plenty of direct competitors, but I honestly don't care enough to engage in any sort of subterfuge (if I were the type of person who were petty enough to do so for - what is this, again - oh yes, a blog that will most likely be forgotten several days after I discontinue writing it.) On the other hand, after reading the details behind hotlinking - when used as a malicious tool - I feel as though, in this instance, I've made a gaffe and hope I haven't offended the website owner. He/she hasn't contacted me yet to give me an electronic kick in the crotch, so I can only assume that I'm either not a nuisance or he/she hasn't noticed yet. 6. In the spirit of my blog (a mix of unix/linux advice, tutorials, essays, scripts, etc and pointers to other humorous and/or interesting sites) and my policy of always attributing original material to the owner (or, at worst, putting up notice on my page that I'm posting something from my Unix warchest - circa 1995 or something - and have no idea who I should attribute the piece to, but am 100% willing to, I wrote the only contact email i could find on the site (oldcomputers@oldcomputers.net - and, at the risk of getting myself into more perceived black-hat activity - that email address is specifically for people who want to trade old computers. Please don't mass email that address unless you have legitimate business with the site owner. I couldn't find another address, and felt that this was a hot enough topic that I would breach that notice in order to sort this out). I emailed the owner and asked him what his/her opinion was on the way I linked to his/her site (with a link to my site that links to his/her site) and will either leave it the way it is or change it, depending upon what the owner/admin of that site wishes. Thanks for all the comments. It's been (if not just entertaining ;) very informative and educational. All the images on my blog are hot-linkable, by the way. If I do end up experiencing an issue were that becomes abused, I now know well how to deal with it. And how to deal with in a way that will make me laugh :) I particularly enjoyed the marriage proposal technique ;) I will post another reply when I hear back from oldcomputers.net, to give this thread closure. If anyone on this thread is from oldcomputers.net, send me an email from there and this can be settled within 24 hours. Thanks, again, for your posts. I think this is the only site I ever submit to where people have the fortitude to say whatever's on their mind (take that as you will ;) , Mike |
| jdixon Apr 28, 2009 11:02 PM EDT |
> ...and will either leave it the way it is or change it, depending upon what the owner/admin of that site wishes. I think everyone here can agree on that being the correct course of action. |
| caitlyn Apr 29, 2009 12:06 AM EDT |
I certainly think that contacting the site owner and asking how to handle this is absolutely the right way to go. jdixon: I never assume consensus on anything around here :) |
| eggi May 04, 2009 9:55 PM EDT |
And, finally, I'm actually replying :) I sent out that email and the site owner was kind of enough to write me back on the 28th of last month. I guess this is some measure of my reaction time ;) It turns out that he feels about half-and-half on the situation, as well: He doesn't appreciate hotlinking to sap his bandwidth, but since he's got a more than a bit to spare and - after reading my post - saw that the write up was for his benefit (rather than my own), he was totally cool with it. He seems like a really decent guy, and I've finally found someone who will gladly take my old Apple IIc off my hands (with the external 5 and 1/4 inch floppy, built-in basic compiler and about 20 games that are still really cool when you consider your options back then). He has one already, but it's gotten beaten up over the years and mine's still mint. The only downside is that the green on black radioactive monitor will scramble your eyeballs in about 5 to 10 minutes ;) So, basically, he's okay with it and glad to be getting the hits. And, if the traffic becomes a problem for him, all he'll have to do is send me an email and I'll repackage that page. He actually got booted off of one provider because someone did a one-direct-link write up on his site on boing-boing... I've had that experience myself. Everything from the hosting provider is "unlimited" bandwidth, number of databases, disk space, etc, until you attract traffic, which crushes the one machine your sharing with 50 other people... I'm not bashing any service in particular... at least directly. That would be - what's the frickin' term - oh yeah, uncouth ;) I've attached the email with parts x'ed out. I was given permission to post the entire email, but I felt strange about putting his name down. His first name is Steven if you want to write him about swapping old computers. Once again, thanks for the debate. Where it not for you fine folks, I still wouldn't realize what an almost-@#@$@@ I was :) , Mike -------------------BEGIN EMAIL Hi Mike, Thanks for the write-up, and for this email. So called "hotlinking" is usually frowned upon by most, for obvious reasons, but in this case I'd say that you're not using my images for YOUR purposes, it's for MY benefit. I like the extra "visitors" more than the bandwidth used by the images on your site. "boingboing" actually did the same thing as you a short while back, but they displayed just one large image, which kept the bandwidth down. See it here: http://boingboing.net/2008/12/06/gallery-of-obsolete.html It wasn't enough - my old hosted booted me off for slowing down his entire server - I was getting multiple hits every second. I liked it, he didn't. I now theoretically have 1TB/month bandwidth available, and have never been anywhere near that (and the month is almost over). If anyone asks, I do prefer when the images are hosted elsewhere, and link back with an , but like I said, in your case, I have no complaints. You can leave your page as is. Thanks- XXXXXX XXXXXX http://oldcomputers.net --- On Tue, 4/28/09, Mike Golvach wrote: > > From: Mike Golvach > > Subject: Urgent Question About Linking To Your Site - Collection Of Old Computers > > To: oldcomputers@oldcomputers.net, "Mike Golvach" > > Date: Tuesday, April 28, 2009, 6:57 PM > > Hi There, > > > > My name is Mike Golvach, and I write the Linux and Unix > > Menagerie Blog at http://linuxshellaccount.blogspot.com. > > > > I very recently did a piece on your site (loved the old > > computers page :) and, since (in my tenure as web writer) > > have found that more often than not, folks prefer for their > > public domain images, etc, that are on their site to be > > linked-to, rather than hosted on the reviewers website with > > an href link back. > > > > You can see the page that highlights your site at: http://linuxshellaccount.blogspot.com/2009/04/obsolete-techn... > > > > I linked to all the images on that page (107 in total) so > > that I wouldn't be stealing your pictures, but (as it turns > > out) I've received a number of friendly > > recommendations that this is a terrible practice to engage > > in. > > > > Since I've been thrashed for going the other way (hosting > > the picture from another person's site and linking back in > > the href of the img src tag), I was wondering how you felt > > about this. > > > > My intent was to point people to your site, which I enjoyed > > browsing. However, if I'm hurting you on bandwidth, I > > don't want to do that and would like to ask for your > > permission to upload the pictures to my site (instead of > > using the img src tag) and have each locally-hosted picture > > point back to the informational page that the pictures on > > your site do. > > > > Apologies if this is confusing. I'm in the custom of > > always linking to other people's material so that they get > > the attribution deserved and there's no hint of impropriety > > or malice (like I might be showcasing other people's work, > > like your own, and taking credit for it - which is what I'm > > trying "not" to do ;) > > > > If you have a second, just let me know how you'd like me to > > handle this and I'll modify the page to suit your needs > > best. I hadn't considered that I might be harming your > > website, or costing you for the directed traffic, but am > > willing to promo you any why you prefer. > > > > Look forward to hearing from you and, on the bright side, > > my web statistics show lots of outbound links to your site > > from mine. So, I've hopefully done you some good :) > > > > Take care, > > > > Mike |
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