Ever since I've been dealing with bandwidth over usage (and having to increase my bandwidth with my webserver), I'm been very aware of hot-linking. Many of you might not be aware of what hot-linking is, or why it's bad.

For a quick definition, hot-linking is when a site adds one of my images to their site without uploading the image to their webserver or blogging software. Instead, they just include the link to my image. Essentially that means that when a person views their blog, the image that loads is coming directly from my webserver--it's like a leech pulling bandwidth from my webserver.

That's called stealing. And it's impolite. :(

For more info on hotlinking, see Julie's great entries here:
Just say "No."
More on hot-linking

And read the technical definition over at Wikipedia.

It's hard to explain, to so I tried to make some graphics... hopefully you'll all understand this...





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On stealing images... It has come to my attention that some bloggers out there are stealing my images and posting them on their own blogs without attribution or a link back to my site. This is also stealing.

It's a common practice to share images you've seen on the web as a way to alert people to great things they might want to see. You post a borrowed image and include a link back to the original image so that readers can see the original source.

95% of the time that I come across one of my images on someone else's blog it's because they have participated in one of the color challenges. They post the graphic I provide, their creation, and then a link back to my blog. That is the proper way to do this.

Similarly, when I post a graphic for a color challenge and it is from a different site, I always include a link back to the original product or image. It's a way to share things and color combos that I like. And I hope that the person or company that I'm linking to would be happy that I like what they are doing or selling.

So, in short, if it's not your image--if you did not take it with your camera--the best thing to do is seek permission to use it, and if that's not possible, at least be sure to include a link to the site your borrowing from. DO NOT include the direct image file on your blog (see hot-linking stuff above), but upload it to your site and then link to original blog post or site that you're borrowing from.

We all need to be a bit more polite. The only way to prevent any this happening is to simply stop sharing on the web, and I just find that depressing. So, let's all help each other out here and be respectful of each others images and bandwidth.

I'll get off my soap box now. Thanks for listening. :)

NOTE: I have disabled comments and hidden the ones that were already posted. This is not because I don't value each and every opinion. I did this because the conversation in the comments were bothering some people and leading to more misunderstandings. Just know that I only brought up hot-linking and attribution to help illustrate it and answer questions that new bloggers might have about hot-linking. If you have a question, please contact me.