Are You a Hotlinking Thief?
This is the most asinine plugin I have ever seen. It’s called “Hot Linked Image Cacher”. It searches for hotlinked images on your blog and updates the links for them. So, basically it’s not only encouraging people to steal from me, it’s helping them. And that just pisses me off.
Hotlinking doesn’t hurt anyone.
Let me be very straight here. Hot linking is theft. When you hotlink to an image not hosted on your own server then you’re stealing bandwidth from another website. That’s bandwidth that someone else is paying for and if you don’t have their implicit permission to use that bandwidth then you’re ripping them off. Basically taking money right out of their pocket. It’s incredibly simply to right-click -> “Save Image” and then upload that image on your own damned server. Don’t have the room for it? Then use one of the endless number of free image hosting services available. If you don’t know how to do that then use one of the search engines and find out how. Don’t want to bother with that? Then don’t use any images. If you hot link you are a thief. It’s very simple.
Don’t be a tool.
Read this, this, and then this . Still in doubt? Then Google it or Yahoo it or use any search engine that suits your fancy. Hot linking is theft. Understand that. Are you really that dirty that you would steal from someone else just for a picture you saw in passing?
Bandwidth is Cheap.
So are candy bars. And you know what? Taking one that you haven’t paid for is still a crime. Besides, how do you know the person you’re stealing from has unlimited bandwidth? What happens if your post gets Dugg and that person’s site gets suspended for overages? Are you going to help them out with their hosting bill? Why not? It was your fault for being a tool. Only stealing from high traffic sites? Doesn’t matter. Wal-Mart has a high profit margin but it’s still illegal to take that candy without paying. You’re stealing from them. If you can’t afford to host the images yourself (Right.) then get a damned Blogger account. You can upload all kinds of pretty pictures to their server. There’s no excuse.
So? What’s your point?
If I catch anyone hotlinking my stuff, trust that I will take measures. If you’re going to steal my bandwidth you’re going to pay some kind of price. If you want to update your links, you should probably make sure that the same picture you originally hotlinked is still on my site. If you’re stealing my images for your site or for a forum, don’t be surprised if you one day find a big honking penis staring at you from your site. You have no control of what I put up here, so you never know what’s going to appear on in the place of that hotlinked image. I’m not one that’s nice enough to ask you to please take it down. You weren’t nice enough to ask me for it and I’ll return the favor.
Someone’s been stealing from me. Now what?
If you’re the victim of a content thief (see above) then you can take measures. You can
- prevent them for accessing your image via an .htaccess
- ask them politely to take it down (why would you do that? They’re thieves.)
- report Blog*Spot bloggers to Google for TOS violations (Good luck there. You’d have better luck reporting them as spammers)
- Switch the image(s) with something else
I prefer the last method because it’s a lot more fun. I saw one instance where someone was hotlinking all the images for a blog theme, so the blogger switched the image file names with new pictures. For instance, the thief was stealing “header.jpg”, which was a lovely header image. The blogger uploaded a replacement image with the exact dimensions, renamed the original header.jpg to something else and renamed the replacement image “header.jpg”. So, when the thief opened up their page they saw a big ol’ banner that said “I’m a hotlinking THIEF!” Oops. The theft didn’t last much longer after that. Lesson learned.
So, if you think that particular plugin would be cool and that you have plenty of use for it, good luck to you. But like any other thief, be warned that I won’t tolerate that crap. And there are plenty of people like me (you think I figured this out myself?). If I run into a site owner who is hotlinking I’ll either never visit that site again or “kindly” inform the owner that they’re stealing. If you care at all about your integrity and/or reputation you’ll think twice before stealing anyone’s content.
P.S.
I’ve also seen site owners who lament having their blog content scraped but have no problem with hotlinking. Here’s a clue to those of you in that situation: HOTLINKING IS ALSO CONTENT THEFT. If you don’t like the scrapers, then how about not stooping to their level?
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Are You a Hotlinking Thief? | Simply Stating……
I ran across a plugin that was touted by some as a “Great WordPress Plugin”. When I saw what the plugin actually does I became livid. More tools for thieves. This is my reaction to that plugin and what I think of anyone that has use for it. If you c…
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Great blog Lizzie, I feel the same way.
I need to make my images in accessible I think…
Mike Olbinski’s last blog post..Journeyman changes his past
I don’t worry too much about hotlinking images myself since most of the linking I’ve seen is rather innocent. For example, someone linking an image in a forum or MySpace page. In fact, I like this when it happens to my mini-sites since it usually brings traffic and ad clickers. The trick here is to watermark the pictures with your URL to lure in this traffic.
I do watch my traffic stats and if an image is sucking up a lot of bandwidth I’ll change the name of it. I’ve only had this happen a couple of times where someone had one of my pictures on a very popular MySpace page.
Frank C’s last blog post..Your Blog Monetization Options: Part V - Paid Reviews
Amen! I feel like I just went to church!
Jason A Clark’s last blog post..Will Ferrell’s “Semi-Pro” Trailer and Teaser Poster
Mike,
I’ve actually done the .htaccess thing, but if someone takes the time to circumvent that I’ve got that other trick up my sleeve.
You can do that or just wait around for someone to do the linking. Then switch out the images.
Frank,
I would much rather not get traffic or backlinks from a thief. I know it shouldn’t matter to me, but I’m old school enough that it does still matter to me. And MySpace is a resource hog (I’m admittedly a little biased in that regard). I just think that there are enough ways to put images on your site and still be aboveboard.
Jason,
Wish I could say I was preaching to the choir. But alas, looks like there’s a “need” for that plugin and that just chaps my butt.
Ha!
I understand where you’re coming from, Lizzie.
It really depends on your objectives with the media, do you want it to be proprietary to your site or do you want to use it like advertising for your site? My outlook has really come full circle from where it used to bother me when people hotlinked, just like it does you, to where I use it as a link and traffic building tool in some cases.
Frank C’s last blog post..Your Blog Monetization Options: Part V - Paid Reviews
In my world, hotlinking is a strange issue. Since a copy of the image isn’t made, it actually reduces or eliminates any question of copyright infringement. However, it raises a slew of other legal issues in its place.
I always advise people to never hotlink images except from sources that permit it such as Flickr. If nothing else, it is bad manners.
However, Webmasters can easily take steps to reduce or eliminate this threat. I don’t think the onus should be on Webmasters to prevent it, but there is no harm in taking a few steps if practical.
Still, I have to agree, hotlinking without permission is always a bad idea.
Jonathan Bailey’s last blog post..Plagiarism Today on the WordPress Podcast
Dude, did you even read the plugin’s description? The plugin is to help you save bandwidth. It searches the hotlinker’s post for hotlinked images and cache them locally on the hotlinker’s server, so it is no longer a hot linked image, but a locally stored image.
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