Many photo sites do not allow people to link to their images. Other home page sites, like geocities and angelfire, ban the practice as well. If you try and link to one of their images on an external page, you get a generic logo instead of the name.

Those sites don't seem to care so why make a big deal of it?

Keep talking - when it comes down to cold, hard cash, eventually ears will perk up.

Good work, Tom. I especially like your addition to html.

I hope Mark is right.........It just seems that they don't understand that this is about a) rights and b) cold hard cash in form of bandwidth costs. They also 'loose' cash on paying for rights to use images when other people don't....

sounds like you are advocating for the end of the internet. the whole reason the web exists, with hypertext links, is to permit crosslinking. guess that is now considered bandwidth theft? are we to start putting meters on our servers, with each isp getting a cut? seems you used a ton of links in your blog article, and after looking at the wikipedia definition you linked, that could also be construed as bandwidth theft as well.
ah, gone are the days of the free and easy web.

Sheesh, hyperlinking and hotlinking are not the same things. Here's a good post about hotlinks: http://altlab.com/hotlinking.html
Hotlinking is when one webpage embeds an image/video file into their webpage, so it' looks like they are serving the image. In reality the random newspaper is hosting the image, and thus footing the bill for the cost of serving said bandwidth. (Oh and nevermind the copyright issues right there - did Drudge pay for the rights to show the photos?)
There is no HYPERlink leading to the random newspaper so that they might enjoy some actual traffic to view their own website. Hyperlinks = god Hotlinks= bad.

dang my spelling, that would be "good" not "god". ;)

I understand the big deal about hotlinks without hyperlinks, but Amazon should be happy about The Drudge Report because that image is also hyperlinked, driving traffic and book sales.

Newspapers and other sites that sell advertising also benefit from hyper-hotlinks for the same reason. In addition, newspapers deal with many folks that aren't that internet saavy (even if not internet saavy themselves), so those folks would likely be impressed by the high number of hits caused even by mere hotlinking.

Clearly not everyone is bandwidth starved. If you don't like it, there are ways of dealing with people, including REQUESTING people not to hotlink.

The internet thrives on theft. You pay for your own bandwith, sure, but you're using the Drudge name to drive traffic to your site. I'm sure you got permission before posting your screenshots also (both from Drudge and the other parties involved)

Drudge is hardly the worst offender. If you hate hyperhotlinks, you should really look at http://news.google.com. What they do is really slick: their bots pair a headline from one paper and a picture from another.

Again, this is great for the paper. Guess which article I read? That's right, the one with the picture.

Fred,

I understand what you're saying, but Drudge could easily link to Amazon's site and send the traffic while putting the image on HIS site. Many news sites have almost given other "news" sites the right to put images up as long as they are related to traffic being sent their way. The issue here is that a conscious decision is being made to do this with some sites and not with others.

As for a screenshot, it's not the same as taking a picture from someone else's site. It's a merged image, in this case, of the site in question plus the information about the image's real location. Mainstream news sites use screenshots all the time, especially those who cover the Internet or software issues.

Obviously you're not understanding how "news" works - it's not theft to report on a story, using someone else's name. If it were theft, then you should start calling every single newspaper, news radio/television station, and website. What would be the point. That's not theft, it's reporting. Theft would be me taking everything someone wrote and republishing it as my own works.

straw man, Amazon actually instruct people to hyper+hotlink their book-sales images. The newspapers do not.

Tom,

>Theft would be me taking everything someone wrote and republishing it as my own works.

In other words, putting it on one's own server.
Amazon, for example, has permission to publish book covers on its server, but I do not. This has been clearly established in copyright law, whereas hyperhotlinking is not (even if the principles seem obvious to you).

Barista (baristanet.com), for example, republishes -- apparently without permission -- photos from news sites. This is similar to USA Today reprinting photos from the Wall Street Journal, even if this practice would save USA Today newsprint. Honorable perhaps, but likely illegal.

>The issue here is that a conscious decision is being made to do this with some sites and not with others.

What exactly IS the issue? Drudge's hyperhotlinked photos are self-documenting: one can see the citation in html or by right clicking and viewing properties. The link below each photo also leads to the original site. News.google.com also includes the name of the original site under each picture.

My comment about "theft" was an analogy -- meant to demonstrate that there are certain practices of news that border on theft (the fact that they are not called theft is the product of years of case law not seemingly obvious principles).

Hotlinking does not dilute copyright as would allowing others to republish without permission.

Even linking to a site costs sites bandwidth. Should Slashdot obtain prior permission before linking to a site?

[sarcasm]
Nevertheless, thanks for keeping the world safe from horrible, evil windmills in the tradition of Don Quixote and Carry Nation.
[sarcasm]

Fred,

Well, since you've obviously cleared that up by stating that we can all hotlink to images everywhere, and that it should be okay, then let's all just go out and do so.

Hyperlinking is an accepted practice. Hotlinking is not, and gets *most* people kicked off their hosts. And to clarify - Drudge's image use does NOT always lead to the article the image is mentioned with.

Hotlinking does not dilute copyright, it dilutes someone else's bandwidth. Slashdot is entitled to link to any site as a hyperlink so people go and visit. It provides bandwidth use on the site people are going *to*, but that is an accepted practice, as previously discussed. Also - a site like MSNBC *wants* the bandwidth to be used when people are viewing their own site - that's why they set it up that way. Let's say 95% of people who visit Drudge's site SEE the image from MSNBC but never visit it to see what it's about. In no way, shape, or form is this beneficial to MSNBC or their advertisers.

If you truly think that hotlinking is legit, that's fine and dandy. Go ahead. I don't believe it is, and that is my opinion. You can compare this to Don Quixote all you want, but I'm not the only one your "sarcasm" affects.

> Hotlinking does not dilute copyright as would allowing
> others to republish without permission.

I'm not sure I'm getting this right... Are you arguing that by hotlinking - ie; leaving X image on X server where X has a right to publish it - does not dilute copyrights?

Even though, that to the naked eye it looks like Y site published X's image? (and Site Y has no permission to do so...)

Strange logic. I might have misunderstood.

QUOTE: "Clearly not everyone is bandwidth starved. If you don't like it, there are ways of dealing with people, including REQUESTING people not to hotlink."

Spoken like a person who does not have a site full of nice images that people wish to nick. No matter how many times you tell people not to hotlink they will - the only thing you can do is rely on .htaccess files or tricks like the alistapart php one linked in the article. It would be great if people read the 'terms of use' or small line begging them not to hotlink at the bottom - but they don't. It would also be great of people learned some internet common sense - hotlinking is NOT OKAY EVER. Images on the web don't belong to everybody!

>> I'm sure you got permission before posting your
>> screenshots also

Are you arguing that screen shots are "derivative work" or are you just utterly clueless about copyright? /rhetorical

I check my logs all the time, and I found that myspace is the worst. I got an account there only so I can ask people to remove backgrounds they're hotlinking of my site. Most are cool, but you'll always find some dumb kids like this thing here:
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewProfile&friendID=18163800
He's been asking for it.

Drudge suprises me with his bold and blatant theft every time I visit his site (many times daily).

I had a domain that I had no use for (awfulpics.com), so now I am hotlinking every pic Drudge hotlinks. If I get sued, so be it. Maybe it'll prove a point.