Neocities.org
question: why do some fanlistings call hotlinking an image "stealing"? i get that some people don't want it hotlinked because it uses up bandwidth or they might wanna change an image. but like i'm taking the image and using it for my website either way. so why is doing it one way stealing but not the other
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I honestly have no clue lol
Probably worded poorly. As in, "stealing bandwidth"
I think it's like skykristal said. From what I remember of being on the web in the 2000s, hotlinking could crash a site because the web host had limitations in place. Or at least that's how I understood it - I could've misunderstood.
(But that said, it's less of an issue these days, so I don't know why the practice has stuck :shrug: )
IIRC hotlinking an image would steal bandwidth from the website that image is hosted on, so it was highly discouraged back in the 90s and 00s. No idea if it’s still an issue now.
@skykristal @defiant-confusion @smokoswebzone thanks for the answers
No problem! I'm not sure if it's taken as seriously now as it was then, though there's a chance that the person saying "NO HOTLINKING" has just been running websites for a really long time lol