RANT: HOT LINKING to other sites

[Trev]

Kind have though it was a coincidence that I had just been on the phone for an hour with my web hoaster getting my *SS chewed off over it.

You pay these people money, and you let them berate you? For something that's not even your fault? I would have been livid.  Screaming. Threatening, perhaps. There's nothing I hate more than poor customer service.

[Trev]

It's not the same. If someone links to your site, then you have people visiting your site. If, on the other-hand, someone hotlinks to one of your image, then they are showing one of your images on their site, and using up your bandwidth. That's not fair; a website should pay for the bandwidth of its own visitors, instead of using up someone else's bandwidth.

Well, except by hot linking, the end user is only downloading the image. If you linked to the page hosting the image, they'd also be downloading the hosting page and any other referenced elements, i.e. using even more bandwidth. It's a lose-lose situation. Bottom line, if one doesn't want the public downloading one's stuff, one shouldn't publish it  in the first place.

[Trev]

@quarkx

Ah, well, if it's a free host, I hope they're good friends; otherwise, I'd still take my business elsewhere. ;-)

Re: netiquette, it's completely unenforceable, and like social etiquette, every culture has different standards....