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Besides what everyone else said, hotlinking other people's resources has been considered bad form since the early days of the Web, and its legality is questiona

by chc 14y ago

Besides what everyone else said, hotlinking other people's resources has been considered bad form since the early days of the Web, and its legality is questionable as well.

marssaxman 14y ago
I've been around since the early days of the web and I never understood why other people decided it ought to be bad form. You put it out there to be downloaded, why shouldn't people download it?
- redthrowaway 14y ago
  Because it means they pay to host and serve it, while you reap the benefits.
- chc 14y ago
  Hotlinking is specifically in contrast to downloading.
  - marssaxman 14y ago
    And yet there is no technical difference. Browsing is downloading. It seems strange to make up non-technical rules about when downloading a piece of data is or is not OK. If The Onion has a problem with the amount of data they are serving, perhaps they should configure their server to reject those requests; putting the onus on the end user not to issue HTTP GET unless a certain non-technical context exists seems.... odd. I understand that this idea has gained currency over the last decade, but I still don't understand or agree with it.
    - chc 14y ago
      There is a huge technical difference between downloading your own copy of a file that you then serve to your visitors and pointing all your traffic at somebody else's server. No engineer in the world would look at those two plans and say, "Eh, I can't tell any difference." > If The Onion has a problem with the amount of data they are serving, perhaps they should configure their server to reject those requests; putting the onus on the end user not to issue HTTP GET unless a certain non-technical context exists seems.... odd. No clue what you're talking about. For one, we're talking about website creators here rather than end users, and it's these website creators' failure to issue an HTTP GET that's considered bad manners.
      - marssaxman 14y ago
        Wait. What? Am I misunderstanding you, or are you seriously suggesting that someone wanting to direct people's web browsers to some interesting resource ought to copy the bits onto their own server, thereby potentially violating the creator's copyright, instead of simply pointing people at the original file? I understand that other people have made up this idea that "hotlinking" is bad, but it never made any sense to me and I never got on board that train. People "hotlink" stuff off my blog all the time and I think that's great. I put the photos up there to be looked at; if people want to share them, I read that as a sign that I took a good photo. If I wanted to stop people from looking at my photos in certain ways - when the referer comes from a site other than my own, for example - then I would configure my web server not to serve out the bits under those conditions. If the Onion doesn't want to serve out their CSS file under certain conditions, they should configure their server not to serve the bits under those conditions. If the Onion chooses instead to configure their web server to serve the bits to anyone who asks for them, people should feel free to ask for them.
        nitrogen 14y ago
        If the Onion chooses instead to configure their web server to serve the bits to anyone who asks for them, people should feel free to ask for them. But it's not "people" asking for them, it's one specific site causing browsers to ask for them unwittingly. Embedding images is less egregious if attributed correctly, but still discourteous and possibly a violation of copyright unless it is encouraged by the site. However, hotlinking CSS is essentially copyright violation (for lifting the design wholesale, essentially creating a derivative work). There is simply no excuse for not writing and hosting your own CSS. As the others have said, when hotlinking/embedding, you are profiting from another system's bandwidth and storage resources. Why don't I just hook up your water tap to my house? You should have put a lock on it if you didn't want it to be used for that purpose. I must point out that hijacking resources from another server is in strong contrast to scraping for personal use, whitehat research, etc. It's one thing to send arbitrary HTTP requests to a server that will answer them. It's another entirely to cause others' browsers to do so without permission, especially in a way that is not explicitly announced and attributed, or accrues to your benefit at the other server's expense.
tingletech 14y ago
Copying the css to your own server could be considered a copyright violation.
- homosaur 14y ago
  The day The Onion sues an obvious parody for copyright violation is the day I eat my shoe. Or write a very angry letter to the editor, one of the two.

by chc 14y ago

Besides what everyone else said, hotlinking other people's resources has been considered bad form since the early days of the Web, and its legality is questionable as well.

marssaxman 14y ago

I've been around since the early days of the web and I never understood why other people decided it ought to be bad form. You put it out there to be downloaded, why shouldn't people download it?

redthrowaway 14y ago
Because it means they pay to host and serve it, while you reap the benefits.
chc 14y ago
Hotlinking is specifically in contrast to downloading.
- marssaxman 14y ago
  And yet there is no technical difference. Browsing is downloading. It seems strange to make up non-technical rules about when downloading a piece of data is or is not OK. If The Onion has a problem with the amount of data they are serving, perhaps they should configure their server to reject those requests; putting the onus on the end user not to issue HTTP GET unless a certain non-technical context exists seems.... odd. I understand that this idea has gained currency over the last decade, but I still don't understand or agree with it.
  - chc 14y ago
    There is a huge technical difference between downloading your own copy of a file that you then serve to your visitors and pointing all your traffic at somebody else's server. No engineer in the world would look at those two plans and say, "Eh, I can't tell any difference." > If The Onion has a problem with the amount of data they are serving, perhaps they should configure their server to reject those requests; putting the onus on the end user not to issue HTTP GET unless a certain non-technical context exists seems.... odd. No clue what you're talking about. For one, we're talking about website creators here rather than end users, and it's these website creators' failure to issue an HTTP GET that's considered bad manners.
    - marssaxman 14y ago
      Wait. What? Am I misunderstanding you, or are you seriously suggesting that someone wanting to direct people's web browsers to some interesting resource ought to copy the bits onto their own server, thereby potentially violating the creator's copyright, instead of simply pointing people at the original file? I understand that other people have made up this idea that "hotlinking" is bad, but it never made any sense to me and I never got on board that train. People "hotlink" stuff off my blog all the time and I think that's great. I put the photos up there to be looked at; if people want to share them, I read that as a sign that I took a good photo. If I wanted to stop people from looking at my photos in certain ways - when the referer comes from a site other than my own, for example - then I would configure my web server not to serve out the bits under those conditions. If the Onion doesn't want to serve out their CSS file under certain conditions, they should configure their server not to serve the bits under those conditions. If the Onion chooses instead to configure their web server to serve the bits to anyone who asks for them, people should feel free to ask for them.
      - nitrogen 14y ago
        If the Onion chooses instead to configure their web server to serve the bits to anyone who asks for them, people should feel free to ask for them. But it's not "people" asking for them, it's one specific site causing browsers to ask for them unwittingly. Embedding images is less egregious if attributed correctly, but still discourteous and possibly a violation of copyright unless it is encouraged by the site. However, hotlinking CSS is essentially copyright violation (for lifting the design wholesale, essentially creating a derivative work). There is simply no excuse for not writing and hosting your own CSS. As the others have said, when hotlinking/embedding, you are profiting from another system's bandwidth and storage resources. Why don't I just hook up your water tap to my house? You should have put a lock on it if you didn't want it to be used for that purpose. I must point out that hijacking resources from another server is in strong contrast to scraping for personal use, whitehat research, etc. It's one thing to send arbitrary HTTP requests to a server that will answer them. It's another entirely to cause others' browsers to do so without permission, especially in a way that is not explicitly announced and attributed, or accrues to your benefit at the other server's expense.

tingletech 14y ago

Copying the css to your own server could be considered a copyright violation.

homosaur 14y ago
The day The Onion sues an obvious parody for copyright violation is the day I eat my shoe. Or write a very angry letter to the editor, one of the two.