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Did you know that every image, every media file, and every page you view and every download you make from a person's website counts against their bandwidth? That is because bandwidth is how many pieces of data are transmitted to the Internet. For websites that are on shared hosting plans, there is a limit to this commodity and if a site exceeds their allocation, it is possible that the site will be blocked based on the policy of the website host. For a website on a dedicated server, there may or may not be these restrictions in place. However, it is safe to assume that vigilant webmasters tend to study their access logs and look for ways to keep their sites secure and cost effective. In doing this, one of the things that they will attempt to block or eliminate is the downloading of files from outside their domain.

Another thing is ask yourself is do you really want to assume responsibility for content you do not control? That is what you are doing when you hotlink to a file. A website can change, delete, or even block a file from being hotlinked without any sort of notice. Then there is also the matter of a site going down, either temporarily or permanently for whatever reason. Finally, what happens if the file you have linked to becomes infected with a virus?

Then there is the matter of copyright. According to the Berne copyright convention, even if something does not have a copyright notice on it, it is copyrighted. This even applies to the United States as of April 1, 1989. So when you hotlink to something you are violating someone else's copyright and they could pursue the matter in a legal manner. Not only could the website go after you, but if they are using files from another source, the original owner of the content could go after you as well.

Hotlinking is definitely not the way to go, if you are trying to create a viable and professional web presence or share something with family and friends. The best thing is do is host your own content on your own server or one of this Internet sites set up for legal photo and file sharing. If you are trying to share a file, link to the page where the file is stored on the original website, so people know where you found it and how they can download it for themselves. If you want to use a photo, contact the webmaster of the site to make arrangements to use the content either by hosting it on your site or using a link that they provide.

Learn more about this author, A. H. Manjikian.
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