One of the the biggest concerns for linkware artists and webmasters that provide graphical content is bandwidth theft, also known as Hotlinking. This problem is becoming so serious that some graphics sites are being disrupted and some have been taken off-line altogether.
About Bandwidth
Bandwidth is the
amount of data sent from one computer to another. When you
opened this page, the data was sent from the host server (our web
site) to your web browser and stored on the hard drive of your
computer in your browser's cache directory. This data is
measured in bytes and the sum total of those bytes determines
bandwidth usage. All Web Service Providers include a certain
amount of bandwidth as a part of their hosting package. If the
web site uses more than that allocated amount of bandwidth per month,
the Web Host will charge them for the excess amount. This can
run into large amounts of money and this is where the problem starts.
Nobody wants to pay extra to host hotlinked graphics.
How Bandwidth is Stolen
Bandwidth is stolen
when a person links directly to an image on another persons' web
server. The Graphics on this site are offered free
for use as long as you save them to your computer, then upload them
together with your pages to the server where your web site resides.
The resulting HTML code for your graphics will look like something
this: <IMG SRC="graphic1.jpg"> The
correct way to do this is to right click and select SAVE
PICTURE AS to copy the image to your computer's hard drive.
The alternative is to not bother saving the image on your computer
but calling it off our server with HTML code something like this:
<IMG SRC="http://www.example.com/art/graphic1.jpg">
If you do this, you are using our bandwidth to display the image on
your site. The more people linking to a particular image or
set of images, the bigger the problem becomes for web site owners
who see their costs rise, sometimes to the extent of having to shut
down their sites.
How to tell if you are being "Hotlinked"
If you come across a
site displaying your images, a quick look at the page source code
(in MIE, select VIEW then SOURCE. In Netscape select VIEW then
PAGE SOURCE) will reveal if your URL is enclosed in the <IMG SRC>
tag, instead of a relative or absolute URL to their own files.
You can right click on individual graphics and select PROPERTIES to
see where the graphic is being called from as well. You should
also check to see if there is a BASE tag located in the document
<HEAD>. Your URL can be used in this tag to bring your
images over to their site.
You can use search engines to find out if someone is linking to your
images as well. In GoogleTM, type: "image:
yourdomain.com/" (without the quotes.) You should get a
list of any sites that are hotlinking your graphics. Hopefully,
there will be none! If you find someone doing this to you, a
firm but polite e-mail informing them that what they are doing is
wrong will usually do the trick. Thankfully the majority of
people who do Hotlink do so out of ignorance or misunderstanding and
will happily rectify their mistake, but you will probably have to
take some time to explain to them what they are doing wrong.
Possible consequences for the Bandwidth Thief
Linking to other
peoples graphics in the way described above leaves you with
absolutely no control of those images. If the images are
deleted, or file and directory names changed, (as we do here on a
regular basis) you will find your site suddenly without those images.
If someone finds you Hotlinking to images on their server, and they
will find you, they could replace the images with ones you didn't
expect to see. This could be anything from an image outing you
as a bandwidth thief to something even more offensive.
Finally, and most importantly, misusing someone else's bandwidth
could result in a law suit against you for costs incurred, your web
site being deleted or disabled and you internet service provider
disconnecting you, either temporarily or permanently. Most web
hosts and ISP's take a very dim view of hotlinking and most include
provisions against it in their terms of use.
If you have any doubt about what you are doing, then don't do
anything. We're sure you will agree that it's better to have
no graphics than to get yourself in hot water for them.