Bandwidth theft (hotlinking)

[bethany54]

If you think that direct linking images off of a website has no consequences, then you are dead wrong. Hot linking images from someone else's site can cause it to go down when the bandwidth allotment has been reached. The site can go down for several hours, days, weeks or even an entire month. Much worse than that the web host can just shut down the site entirely if they decide the site is too much of a bandwidth hog because of all the direct linking going on on the site. Direct linking images uses up extra bandwidth and makes a site go down faster. Not only are you screwing the webmaster over by making his site go down, you are screwing over other visitors to the site who can't get there because the bandwidth allotment has been used up and you are also screwing yourself over because any images you are direct linking turn into red X's while the site is down. You have to ask yourself if you really want to be responsible for shutting down someone else's site.

It is really very simple.... DON'T LINK DIRECTLY TO THE IMAGES! Right click and save them to your own computer then upload them to your own image host. It may be a little more trouble for you but at least this way you will not be stealing bandwidth. Actually Bandwidth Theft is illegal. Kindly understand and respect this. So I'm putting up a couple of links to good explanations of what the concept of Bandwidth theft is and how you can keep from doing it.


Read these if you still don't understand.

www.lalaalyssa.com/aly/directlinking.html
www.xentrik.net/htaccess/hotlinking.php
www.phenomenalwomen.com/donteventhinkaboutit/
www.geocities.com/Heartland/Pines/4210/bandwidth.html
cstern.sphosting.com/csdesigns/linking.html


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Mahud and Shan, I don't know where this should go so please move it to an appropriate place.

[Michael]

Oh, yeah, I've had my share of Bandwidth stealing. lol... When I first starting "exploring" the internet I decided that I wanted my own website. I was pretty much a noob to everything and so I just wrote a bunch of junk in and making it official like. And then I saw a bunch of pictures that I liked and... guess what?! I TOOK THE PERSON'S BANDWIDTH! lol.. I know it's nothing to laugh about but it's more of a laugh of relief or something like that because when I said a bunch... I mean, like... [tele]50 or more[/tele]! *shrugs* Yeah, I know, that's a lot but I didn't know what I was doing and thankfully the person who owned the pictures got ahold of me and realized how much of a noob I was. He explained the whole bandwidth thing to me... I still didn't understand too many of the stuff he was talking about. The only thing I basically learned was that hotlinking is stealing the bandwidth. But I still didn't understand what bandwidth was. But over the year and a half to two years that I've been "exploring" the internet I've come to learn the "lingo" of the internet. Or parts of it anyways. lol... ^_^ Still a noob though.

[matthew]

Thanks for posting this, Bethany

[bethany54]

You are welcome Mahud. I have been noticing that a lot of boards are hotlinking smilies from smilie sites and then you fussed at someone about hotlinking. Crackssmilie site is down and so are several others that I really liked a lot. Slfwood is also having bandwidth problems due to people hotlinking so I wrote it up for exco and Sarah has modified it for a couple of other places. I think sometimes people don't understand hotlinking and band width mean.

[randhr2]

That is true. I remember I like last year that I started my new site and then I didnt know anything about CSS HTML MySql PHP etc. And especially bandwith because I barely new about computers and I was hotlinking someones site and they where shut down in a hiatus and now I dont do that. I use Photobucket for my image host. So NO ONE EVERY HOTLINK OK? Good.

[geokerkid]

Hmm I didn't know you could steal other people's bandwidth..

Is it bandwidth theft if I take their pictures and paste them on my website? :-\

[Michael]

Yes, it is. What you need to do is save the picture onto your computer and then upload it. Or if the image host that you are using provides the option, paste the URL and upload that way. ;]

[Ifrit]

Otherwise the people would probably hunt you down and try to steal your bandwidth xP I know I would xP

[Lhiata]

Hi you guys.... finally got my computer fixed, I'm now up and running, back in action...


Umm.... so I see there's been some issues with bandwidth....

Can I help? Maybe set up a photobucket account just for OCgfx, give the username and password to admins, maybe whomever designed the current template can email me the icons, and I can set them to the photobucket account, then code them back in myself?

I'm a mod, I used to run a forum, and know how to run the codes.

It's just.... the only way I knew how to login, post, ect. is that I used to run a proboards forum myself, and *know* where everything is, and someone who isn't very familiar with the layout is most likely going to have issues... everything takes ages to load...


*hugs*

You guys know where to find me.

[40ringz]

Man... I didn't know it was illegal!! Man... I admit I've done it, but I didn't know then. Now I know! THANK YOU Bethany! You probably have saved me from being arrested. XP

[Ifrit]

Yeah she did. . . Maybe all of us o.O

[yyryy6]

Combination selling is an amalgam of the two above points. wow power leveling The very best sales methods there are use both cross and up selling. wow power leveling The key advantage to this is that you will most likely experience a surge in sales, world of warcraft gold but better than that, you will get an even larger surge in profits. gold in wow
This is because the cost of doing the transaction is substantially diluted or wow gold eu reduced if you can make one transaction equal two or three sales. In effect, wow gold cheap you are making additional sales without the expense and wow cheap gold effort of having to attract the customers to your business, best wow gold and thus driving your profit margins up.