meaning of “hotlinks not allowed”
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Recently I have come across this prohibition twice. What does it mean?
I thought that this was the correct way to use somebody else’s picture on my blog: I take his picture to my computer and there make a thumbnail of it. I then send that thumbnail to my blog and link that thumbnail to the original picture. However, now I read that this is “stealing bandwidth”.
And yet I think on some blogs they explicitly ask you to leave the picture hosted on their computer.I thought that was because they want the hits that the picture might generate.
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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Many sites will prohibit hotlinking because that can end up costing them more money in bandwidth charges. That is why sites will disallow hotlinking of images.
First off you should always have permission from the copyright holder of the image before posting it on your blog whether you hotlink to it or download it and then upload it to your blog. The act of displaying a copyrighted image, no matter the method used to do it is illegal unless you have permission from the copyright holder. There are basically three situations:
1. The image is copyrighted and you need permission from the copyright holder in order to post it. Sometimes they will post “usage” guidelines on their site.
2. The image is under one of the creative commons licenses, and you have to determine which and then comply with the requirements. Again they might actually post the requirements on the site.
3. The image is part of the public domain – you can post it without worry. Do make certain that the image is public domain.
Some sites do indeed ask that you not download the image, but hotlink to it. That is how they are able to track who is displaying their images. They can track it through the URL requests.
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I think the most polite way to handle it is to provide a link to the website where the image is displayed. Not a link to the image itself (that’s hotlinking) but to the actual website. Your post can say something like: “Go here [link] to see the image I’m talking about.”
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THat’s what I do: I copy the image, upload it into my own webspace here at WP.com, and then make the image itself a link to the source page. I’ve gotten a positive response from artists and photographers for doing this, but they always prefer that you ask first.
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To “sacredpath”:
I don’t think that a law such as you describe can be enforced, and a law that is somehow considered valid but is not enforced is a very dangerous thing.
It looks like the thumbnail is permitted, or the law will have to accept that thumbnails are samples that have to be allowed. All of Google Images is thumbnails.Of course this opens up a loophole, because there is as yet no definition of how big a thumbnail could be, and I know have been cheating, especially in one case where I published first one fragment and then another fragment of a joke.
Asking for permission to use a thumbnail also seems awkward in the case of very big sites, like the Thyssen Museum or the US Library of Congress.
Anyway, thank you for explaining this “hotlink” business. Now there I was really wrong, and now I will have to correct dozens of pictures of mine that are hotlinked.
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That law IS enforced, and violating it can get your blog here deleted quicker than you could possibly imagine. I’ve seen it happen over and over. I suggest you take that warning seriously.
Thumbnails have something of a track record in court, but it’s still an issue to take very seriously.
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I have been googling and here is what I found:
“The appeal court last month disagreed with the photographer, finding that the display of miniature images, or thumbnails, fell within the copyright law exception of “fair use”.
http://www.out-law.com/page-2412
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” Likewise, see Kelly v. Arriba Soft Corporation, where the Ninth Circuit held that copying an entire photo to use as a thumbnail in online search results did not weigh against fair use, if the secondary user only copies as much as is necessary for his or her intended use.”“fair use applies only to copyrighted works, describing conditions under which copyrighted
material may be used without permission.”“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use
………………………………………………………………However, I also found (and accidentally deleted) another quote where the almighty Google lost in a German court. The court decided that the thumbnails were a copyright violation.
Now see? This is legislating against established common practice.
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We SEE. Everyone is aware of the issue. But if you want to argue the issue, you’d best take it to The Hague.
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Fair Use applies to visual media the same as it does print. And basically in print it just means be polite when you quote my work, and “quote” doesn’t mean “lift”. If you’re looking for an official source, you can try this.
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Now I think the issue is not copyright, but “bandwidth theft”. As far as I know I do not pay for “bandwidth”. WordPress does, I guess, but I don’t know either. Now, if I link a picture to Wikipedia, do I steal their bandwidth?
Most of my pictures are Wikipedia. Most of my cartoons are from two artists that give explicit permission. However, lots of my pictures are hotlinks. I thought that was the right way since it tells the owner of the picture that I am using his picture.
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I link photos from my Flickr page, so it’s a bandwidth issue for Flickr. But it’s a service they provide. Linking to a photo on an entertainment blog, or Wikipedia, which does not allow for this is stealing their bandwidth.
The best way, in my opinion, is to create then upload a thumbnail of the photo to WordPress, or a photo hosting site, then link back to the owner. If the person is giving permission for their image to be used then take the image (save as), upload it to WordPress but when you put it on your site link back to the original author/cartoonist.
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To Featherseeds:
Yours is a very nice avatar! And I have also just been to your web page and will presently go back to see more, because I was also impressed by the photo I saw there.
I have never stolen any text, and as to pictures I got it simply wrong, though there are also places and even court decisions that see it my way. As long as the picture that I want to show is not being kept on my computer and is only as a thumbnail on my blog, the owner is in full control of it. If furthermore I link my thumbnail to his site, he is informed that his picture is being advertised on somebody else’s blog.
This leaves out the “resources”. I misunderstood that. I thought that each time I open a picture my internet provider gets the bill! According to my former internet contract, that was so. I could download up to a giga or two and from then on I had to pay.
My blog is small, about 200 hits a day, and last Sunday, of these 200, some 60 were for a thumbnail of Omaha beach which is only a thumbnail leading viewers to the original photo at a US university site. I sent them 60 people! They have great pictures about that landing. I only have a timeline.
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