Legal "Hot Linking"

[witeshark]

Maybe this issue is generating more heat then it's worth, just my 2 cents...

 

[muso]

Hotlinking is not allowed. Just as we do not allow threads on how to steal software or music here, we do not allow members to use up other people's bandwidth. Not only is it stealing, but it is rude. Since there is no way to tell whether a hotlinked image is from the member's own server or not, we have to disallow it completely.

 

[witeshark]

Well these are some thoughts I have, it's in efficient because obviously the link has to be followed, as opposed to the image being neatly on the server. If the host server is too busy or being worked on the image is broken. And I agree that it's way more polite to make a separate copy of an available image and upload it to where you plan to use it. It's the way I do things like that

 

[hype.it]

Now disallowing hot-linking completely, make it's fair.
So this should mean, no more images from other peoples site's and server's including siggys. Right?

 

[muso]

That's right.

 

[hype.it]

forum rules still the same?

FORUM RULES - DO NOT BREAK THESE RULES OR YOU WILL BE BANNED!

SIGNATURE RULES
You can have one (1) image in your signature
This image can be 480 pixels wide and 80 pixel high ( IE: 480x80 )
This image can be up to 15K in filesize
You may have 4 lines of text in ADDITION to the image
You may have as many links as you like, just adhere to the 4 lines rule

DO NOT BREAK THESE RULES OR YOU WILL BE BANNED!

 

[muso]

Yes. It is still possible for members to have images in their signatures - upload the image to our server in a thread of your own and retrieve the link to it out of the source code.

 

[pcjabber]

Hotlinking is not allowed. Just as we do not allow threads on how to steal software or music here, we do not allow members to use up other people's bandwidth. Not only is it stealing, but it is rude. Since there is no way to tell whether a hotlinked image is from the member's own server or not, we have to disallow it completely.

Unfortunately, this is true...However, would you allow image linking from one of the great _FREE_ hotlinking services? Here's some examples:
uploadit.org
(can't find anymore at the moment)
(whoops, seems that that has gone downhill. Never mind.)

Not trying to 'stir the pot' or anything, just stating an opinion and asking a question.

 

[trpnmonkey41]

No....the only image linking allowed now on the site is images that are posted onto the mac-forums server. The mods can't take the time to look at all the images to see if they are on a free image server and if that it is the users own server (most free servers still have bandwidth limits)

 

[witeshark]

This is what I was thinking!

 

[hype.it]

What about if it's your own server? From which, you host your domain on.
I got plenty bandwidth coming my way, it's not like it's stolen... we're not online yet, but soon!

 

[muso]

No, as I said before - no hotlinking whatsoever. The problem is that we cannot tell if the image is from the member's own server or not. The problem is not with having images from servers owned by members here, but because we don't know if those servers are actually member-owned or not, we have to say, "No hotlinking at all" otherwise it gets too complicated.

 

[hype.it]

Sorted!....