Free Advice For Jaime The Image Hotlinking Thief

Update: 12.57 pm (1 1/2 hours after I uploaded the post):

The image from the site mentioned below has been deleted, as has the comment I wrote on Jaime’s post.

And Jaime has apologized.  Thanks Jaime.

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Over at Bookmom Musings, Jaime hotlinks to images she finds on the web.

What that means is that instead of taking/buying her own images, she finds ones she likes and links to it within her blog post.

She has linked over to an image on this site for use within this blog post.

The image did look like this:

Now it looks like this:

What happens is my bandwidth gets used up by Bookmom.  Which is great for her because she’s not paying.

Not so great for me, because I pay for part of the costs of her web site.

I generally don’t like to pay for other people’s business expenses.

It’s because I’m not a charity!

My (Free) Advice To Jaime

Anyhow, here’s my advice to Jaime, or anyone else thinking of hotlinking to images they have no right to:

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Hi Jaime

You seem to hotlink to images you find on the web.  This is really going to bite you on the ass before long.

i.e. I’ve replace the image you link to on my site with a message asking you not to do it.

It could just have easily been some highly offensive image that would make you look very stupid/or hacked.

You see, by hotlinking to an image on site you’re stealing my bandwidth.  Every time that image gets looked at by your readers, I get charged (via my hosting bandwidth).

(And as a “Bookmom” you really should be aware of copyright issues).

As much as I’d love your site to succeed, I don’t really think that I should underwrite it by paying costs that you should be incurring.

The other aspect that’s going to hurt you is that I purchased that image off Getty Images for 1 off usage.

They constantly scan the web to see who has ripped off their image.

That’s when they find you.  That’s when they send you a bill for $1,500 for the use of the image.

That’s when you scream and cry that you didn’t know, that you’re ignorance should be justification, that you’re just a little blog, that you can’t afford the bill, etc, etc.

What happens next?

1.  You’ll see this image or comment or your readers will alert you to it.
2.  You’ll then quickly take down the link to my image.
3.  You may apologise, you may not.
4.  And then, in a surprise to no-one, I’m the guy that suffers the most because:
a) you stole my bandwidth,
b) I had to mess about and replace that image,
c)  I then had to write this blog post,
d) when you do the right thing and replace that image I need to go back to my site and put my image back otherwise my page will look stupid with that “Jaime” image there.

Here’s a bit of advice to finish off with:

If you publish, you’re a publisher.

Learn the rules or get the hell out.

Cheers

Brendon

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Will let you know what Jaime does.

Cheers

Brendon