What is hotlinking, and why do people get so cranky about it?
Hotlinking is when you use an img tag or similar tag to embed a picture or video or sound file that is hosted on someone else’s website to make that object show up on your own site, or on a bulletin board as part of your own post. Most often it is done with images, by making the src of the img tag the URL to someone else’s image. Hotlinking is a practice universally and correctly considered completely inappropriate behaviour. People who pay for hosting get a certain amount of bandwidth every month. Every time someone loads a file from their website, part of that bandwidth is used up. People really don’t like having their bandwidth being used up by *other* peoples’ sites, because basically that person is getting the benefit of having a file displayed on their site without paying the price for the hosting. Put simply, most people consider it theft. Even those who don’t find it morally wrong don’t want to see their website go over-quota (and thus get shut down for the rest of the month) j
