[Final Update] – Post title changed one more (and final) time. I have updated this post one final time because I didn’t realise how quickly and more importantly how high up my post would come in a search for Noah’s name. I have spoken to Noah and he is genuinely sorry and I don’t (now) think the hotlinking was done maliciously. Lesson learned, Google places a lot more stock in what I say than I had realised. Must remember to think before I Publish, must remember to ….

[UPDATE] I have changed the title of this post. Many people have responded in the comments of this post to say I was too harsh on Noah – and they are completely correct. I thought about titling the post “Reasons not to steal bandwidth” (Noah’s post is titled “Reasons not to blog”) and taking a much more humourous approach to the issue but it was Monday morning and I let my temper get in the way (red hair!). Lesson learned – take a deep breath before hitting Publish!

If you link to an image on someone else’s site you really should ask their permission. Otherwise, every time someone views the image on your site, you are stealing bandwidth from the site hosting the image.

Noah Kagan did this recently. He used an image from this site on his blog without asking my permission. This is theft. I pay for the bandwidth that he and his site’s viewers are consuming.

Of course, there is another very good reason not to link to images on someone else’s site – you have no control over those images. They could be deleted, renamed, or changed at any time – like below – I replaced the image Noah was using with a more appropriate one – now Noah’s site is hosting an image which tells it as it is!

Poetic justice. That bandwidth I am happy to pay for.