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Yes there is when you are hotlinking. Hotlinking in general is considered theft, you are using someone elses bandwidth and could even ddos the host if you are n

Yes there is when you are hotlinking. Hotlinking in general is considered theft, you are using someone elses bandwidth and could even ddos the host if you are not caching the response.

arbitrage 6y ago
it's so easy to mitigate, though, that the fact that one doesn't sorta implies that one might want randos from the internet to use one's resources to view this image. it's not theft if you leave it out for everyone to use.
- JackWins 6y ago
  My garden doesn't have a fence, doesn't mean you can host your picnic here.
  - dylan604 6y ago
    No, but if I wander into your garden and "injure" myself, I can sue you for damages. You will be held negligent for not properly protecting yourself from preventing other people from injuring themself on your property.
    - gokhan 6y ago
      Is this something real (in US, most probably)?
      - nikanj 6y ago
        Yes, you can sue anyone for anything. Your suit probably won't prevail, unless you have access to very expensive lawyers and your opponent doesn't. But you can totally sue anyone for anything, and that makes for entertaining headlines - even though if plaintiff lost promptly
        olliej 6y ago
        The problem of course is that the "victim" has a lawyer operating on a contingency, whereas you have to pay your legal costs, and generally cannot recuperate them.
      - pastech 6y ago
        In France (at least), all swimming pools are protected by a fence. If you own a pool and don't put a fence around it, you can be held responsible for a child drowning into it. It is possible this principle applies to other countries and other things than pools.
      - wruza 6y ago
        Here in Russia, if you leave poisonous chemicals like methanol, etc, unmarked or put a bear trap in your locked house behind a locked fence with a generic warning sign, and then someone dies or gets injured by these, chances are you will go to jail. Idk if this applies to accidental traps like pools or rakes in grass. Same for taking a knife out of an attackers hand and stabbing them back. (Yes, our laws protect criminals better than citizens, not joking.)
        rendall 6y ago
        Interesting. So if I understand this correctly, if someone breaks into your house and gets injured, and they can make a good case for some kind of negligence on your part, then they can successfully sue you?
        wruza 6y ago
        If a judge or an expert is sure that you intended this outcome, and that someone is brave (or dead) enough to admit their own crime.
        rendall 6y ago
        It's also illegal to set a trap in your own home in the US as well, decided when a property owner, tired of people breaking into his property while he was away, set up a shotgun booby trap that injured a burglar. https://youtu.be/bV9ppvY8Nx4 https://youtu.be/bV9ppvY8Nx4 I wasn't sure if it is the same or similar principle in Russia or a different one that requires active care for a burglar. Unlabeled chemicals causing liability for a burglar seems extreme to me
        varjag 6y ago
        This is an urban legend in Russia.
        eythian 6y ago
        Leaving a bear trap goes way beyond negligence, it's literally setting a trap. Similar with unmarked dangerous chemicals, they're required to be marked for good reason.
    - zaarn 6y ago
      Wikimedia has a User-Agent policy which is being violated here. Hence this is the property owner putting up a sign that says "risk of injury", so if you walk in and injure yourself, you only have to blame yourself for being negligent.
      - h_anna_h 6y ago
        The policy is for how wikipedia will act when encountering clients with certain user-agent headers, not a rule for the clients.
        zaarn 6y ago
        It's a policy how wikimedia acts when clients lack a user agent header, it's therefore effectively a rule for clients as without a proper UA header, they may be blocked indefinitely.
    - AdrianB1 6y ago
      Only in your dreams and some dumb countries, not in the rest of the world.
      - dylan604 6y ago
        You think this, but how much experience do you have with it? People know that homeowners have insurance. They sue to make the insurance pay out. It happened to my neighbor. So you can make all of the dumb countries comments you want, but it doesn't make it any less real.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
concordDance 6y ago
> Hotlinking in general is considered theft This is a pretty puzzling idea to me. How could linking something be theft? To explore this, I shall try a metaphor. Imagine you're on a big social media website (lets call it Programmer Olds) which has an oddity in that 99% of its users use adblock. You then post a link to another small (ad supported) website on your Programmer Olds page, causing a large number of people to click through and download the page using large amounts of bandwidth (for no monetary gain to the site) and possible DDOSing the site. Have you commited theft?
- JCharante 6y ago
  > causing a large number of people to click through and download the page using large amounts of bandwidth (for no monetary gain to the site) The difference here is that while a lot of users use adblock, there are some that don't. These users can still see the ads. Additionally even though it's a small website, it may lead to new readers that stick around or the content itself may even be sponsored. The equivilent to hot linking a picture would be like taking the content of a blog post without really linking to the source, because there's no chance of conversions there. If you're linking to the site itself then there's a reasonable chance that users can convert. So I suggest that it's theft just because the chances of readers being converted is nil while you're using their bandwidth.
- lorenzhs 6y ago
  > This is a pretty puzzling idea to me. That's because you're responding to an entirely different issue. "Hotlinking" isn't linking to something, it's including a resource that is hosted elsewhere. It's putting <img src="https://concordDance.whatever/images/big_image.jpg https://concordDance.whatever/images/big_image.jpg"> on my website without asking you. Now if my site ends up on the front page of HN, that could cause a lot of traffic to your site, potentially overwhelming your server or increasing your hosting bill. It's not nice, and rightfully frowned upon.
  - concordDance 6y ago
    But from a loss and gain perspective it seems equivalent. In both cases the site loses bandwidth for no gain due to your actions.
yreg 6y ago
No, it's not universally considered a theft. Wikimedia explicitly permits hotlinking[0]. So does xkcd, imgur and tons of other sites. Of course when someone doesn't want us to hotlink to their assets then don't do it. [0] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Reusing_content_outside_Wikimedia/technical#Hotlinking https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Reusing_content_o...

Yes there is when you are hotlinking. Hotlinking in general is considered theft, you are using someone elses bandwidth and could even ddos the host if you are not caching the response.

arbitrage 6y ago

it's so easy to mitigate, though, that the fact that one doesn't sorta implies that one might want randos from the internet to use one's resources to view this image. it's not theft if you leave it out for everyone to use.

JackWins 6y ago
My garden doesn't have a fence, doesn't mean you can host your picnic here.
- dylan604 6y ago
  No, but if I wander into your garden and "injure" myself, I can sue you for damages. You will be held negligent for not properly protecting yourself from preventing other people from injuring themself on your property.
  - gokhan 6y ago
    Is this something real (in US, most probably)?
    - nikanj 6y ago
      Yes, you can sue anyone for anything. Your suit probably won't prevail, unless you have access to very expensive lawyers and your opponent doesn't. But you can totally sue anyone for anything, and that makes for entertaining headlines - even though if plaintiff lost promptly
      - olliej 6y ago
        The problem of course is that the "victim" has a lawyer operating on a contingency, whereas you have to pay your legal costs, and generally cannot recuperate them.
    - pastech 6y ago
      In France (at least), all swimming pools are protected by a fence. If you own a pool and don't put a fence around it, you can be held responsible for a child drowning into it. It is possible this principle applies to other countries and other things than pools.
    - wruza 6y ago
      Here in Russia, if you leave poisonous chemicals like methanol, etc, unmarked or put a bear trap in your locked house behind a locked fence with a generic warning sign, and then someone dies or gets injured by these, chances are you will go to jail. Idk if this applies to accidental traps like pools or rakes in grass. Same for taking a knife out of an attackers hand and stabbing them back. (Yes, our laws protect criminals better than citizens, not joking.)
      - rendall 6y ago
        Interesting. So if I understand this correctly, if someone breaks into your house and gets injured, and they can make a good case for some kind of negligence on your part, then they can successfully sue you?
        wruza 6y ago
        If a judge or an expert is sure that you intended this outcome, and that someone is brave (or dead) enough to admit their own crime.
        rendall 6y ago
        It's also illegal to set a trap in your own home in the US as well, decided when a property owner, tired of people breaking into his property while he was away, set up a shotgun booby trap that injured a burglar. https://youtu.be/bV9ppvY8Nx4 https://youtu.be/bV9ppvY8Nx4 I wasn't sure if it is the same or similar principle in Russia or a different one that requires active care for a burglar. Unlabeled chemicals causing liability for a burglar seems extreme to me
        varjag 6y ago
        This is an urban legend in Russia.
        eythian 6y ago
        Leaving a bear trap goes way beyond negligence, it's literally setting a trap. Similar with unmarked dangerous chemicals, they're required to be marked for good reason.
  - zaarn 6y ago
    Wikimedia has a User-Agent policy which is being violated here. Hence this is the property owner putting up a sign that says "risk of injury", so if you walk in and injure yourself, you only have to blame yourself for being negligent.
    - h_anna_h 6y ago
      The policy is for how wikipedia will act when encountering clients with certain user-agent headers, not a rule for the clients.
      - zaarn 6y ago
        It's a policy how wikimedia acts when clients lack a user agent header, it's therefore effectively a rule for clients as without a proper UA header, they may be blocked indefinitely.
  - AdrianB1 6y ago
    Only in your dreams and some dumb countries, not in the rest of the world.
    - dylan604 6y ago
      You think this, but how much experience do you have with it? People know that homeowners have insurance. They sue to make the insurance pay out. It happened to my neighbor. So you can make all of the dumb countries comments you want, but it doesn't make it any less real.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

concordDance 6y ago

> Hotlinking in general is considered theft This is a pretty puzzling idea to me. How could linking something be theft? To explore this, I shall try a metaphor. Imagine you're on a big social media website (lets call it Programmer Olds) which has an oddity in that 99% of its users use adblock. You then post a link to another small (ad supported) website on your Programmer Olds page, causing a large number of people to click through and download the page using large amounts of bandwidth (for no monetary gain to the site) and possible DDOSing the site. Have you commited theft?

JCharante 6y ago
> causing a large number of people to click through and download the page using large amounts of bandwidth (for no monetary gain to the site) The difference here is that while a lot of users use adblock, there are some that don't. These users can still see the ads. Additionally even though it's a small website, it may lead to new readers that stick around or the content itself may even be sponsored. The equivilent to hot linking a picture would be like taking the content of a blog post without really linking to the source, because there's no chance of conversions there. If you're linking to the site itself then there's a reasonable chance that users can convert. So I suggest that it's theft just because the chances of readers being converted is nil while you're using their bandwidth.
lorenzhs 6y ago
> This is a pretty puzzling idea to me. That's because you're responding to an entirely different issue. "Hotlinking" isn't linking to something, it's including a resource that is hosted elsewhere. It's putting <img src="https://concordDance.whatever/images/big_image.jpg https://concordDance.whatever/images/big_image.jpg"> on my website without asking you. Now if my site ends up on the front page of HN, that could cause a lot of traffic to your site, potentially overwhelming your server or increasing your hosting bill. It's not nice, and rightfully frowned upon.
- concordDance 6y ago
  But from a loss and gain perspective it seems equivalent. In both cases the site loses bandwidth for no gain due to your actions.

yreg 6y ago

No, it's not universally considered a theft. Wikimedia explicitly permits hotlinking[0]. So does xkcd, imgur and tons of other sites. Of course when someone doesn't want us to hotlink to their assets then don't do it. [0] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Reusing_content_outside_Wikimedia/technical#Hotlinking https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Reusing_content_o...