Is hotlinking to images illegal?

Published on May 9, 2010 By narbytrout In WinCustomize Talk

This month in the MAY screenie post here at wincustomize, a fellow subscriber asked me "where can I find that wall(paper)?"

Now, as I am not a professional forum type person, I just posted a link directly to the FREE wallpaper on the origin site.

Then after I posted my reply, I checked the link and it worked fine.

In the same reply, I posted a link to the homepage of the origin site and gave the title/author 100% credit (of course) and some awesome cudos for such nice artwork.

The next day, I checked the direct link to the wall and found myself redirected to a google search of this "hotlinking" topic. (My link had changed and not by my doing). But, the link to the homepage of origin is still intact.

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Is this actually illegal? How did my link get changed?

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I honestly did not mean to cause any harm or trouble... just trying to be sociable. I have seen many hotlinks around the forums, but since I do not know the etiquette of every situation, I feel I need to ask.

Thank you for any helpful replies... I wont be able to check back here until tomorrow morning. I need a couple hours sleep before I go to work tonight.

Comments

narbytrout

on May 09, 2010

Just had a thought... which is really another question.

What is the difference between Google doing this and me doing this?

Disturbedcomputer

on May 09, 2010

I would say no as you did not give the wallpaper to him/her or host the WP or claim it was yours....

but if by some chance the site/uplaoder you linked to was the one stilling it could be why the link did not work later..

or it could be just the link went kaboom

Snowman

on May 09, 2010

Linking to image(s) is perfectly fine, but 'hotlinking' as in displaying the image(s) in it's full content is not.
That would be (almost) the same as submitting it to our wallpaper gallery.

As for Google...
Google is not displaying them, as per say. You yourself are 'generating' the links by using the search function.

Disturbedcomputer

on May 09, 2010

oh my bad did not know linking and hot-linking was different so if I got this right now hot-linking is showing the image as full size ??

Snowman

on May 09, 2010

In our perspective, yes.

It may not be this way on other sites or with other files, but we are a site based on works of graphics, and displaying unobscured copyrighted material directly from other sources (without permission) is a violation of both the artists copyright AND the TOS of this site.

narbytrout

on May 10, 2010

Ok... I get it now.

I will be more cautious of my social activities.

Thank you very much. and D.C.

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