Let’s say you find a great image on the internet and want to use it in your blog. Which is the correct technique:

1. Use hotlink so your blog grabs the image from another site
2. Download the image to your own computer or server

If you said #1, go sit in the corner and wear the pointy hat.

Bandwidth Theft

Putting aside copyright protection, using a hotlink (img src=”_”) puts the bandwidth of serving a picture to your blog on someone else’s server.

This is not a big deal if the picture is some esoteric image you found in the bowels of the internet. But if the picture to which you’ve linked is popular, outside traffic (including yours) can put a major hit on the bandwidth of this other server. Bandwidth costs money.

Hotlinking, once common, is now frowned-upon in Web 2.0 blogging communities. It’s been dubbed “bandwidth theft.”

What are the penalties?

You could be flamed (nasty comments in your blog) or spammed or any number of other counter-productive counter-measures.

Using Images the Web 2.0 Way

In many popular browser, you can simply drag a picture to your desktop. Or, right click and download the image.

Upload same pic to your blog. Done!

Permission to Hotlink

Some images include permission to link. This is usually because the organization hosting the image is looking to generate buzz and is willing to pay for the bandwidth. Here’s an example from WordCamp 2007, the blog-fest this coming weekend:

Copy and paste this code, hotlinking is okay:
<a href="http://wordcamp.org/"><img src="http://2007.wordcamp.org/attendee.gif" alt="I'm going to WordCamp" border="0" /></a>

(Unfortunately, OCDC is not going to WordCamp. Maybe next year!)

But many thanks to WordPress for this good example of “permission to hotlink.” Also thanks to AltLab.