Poking around in my referrer logs (still), I noticed a big spike in traffic all pointing toward one image Beth had used on her blog. It seems this image had become popular on various discussion boards, where people were either posting it as a “Hey, look at this funny picture!” kind of thing or were using it as their profile picture. Ha. Funny. Except not so much, because they were linking directly to Beth’s image on my server.

Quick tutorial on Web Ethics 101: If you see an image on the web and want to use it on your own web page, you should download a copy of it and upload it to your own server and link to that. It is very uncool to link to an image on someone else’s server because that is a form of bandwidth theft. Every hit you get on your page using the image is also a hit on the actual server the image is located on, and that hit counts against the picture’s server’s bandwidth. Bandwidth costs money, and if the picture you’re using gets really popular then that means the hosting server’s owner is going to have to pay for all the added traffic. Bottom line: linking to other people’s images is uncool.

Beyond being uncool, linking to other people’s images can also blow up in your face. If the hosting site’s owner figured out that you’re linking to his images and running up his bandwidth and he decided to take steps, he could, say, delete “your” image and substitute it with a new, completely different image. Perhaps a truly revolting, stomach-turning picture of some form of bestiality. And he might give this bestiality picture the same name as the file you were linking to, so that your your profile picture and your “Hey, look at this funny picture!” and “Happy Valentine’s Day” posts all start showing up with something revolting that is very much not work- and parent- and school-safe.

And if you were a clueless 16-year old newb, or a German homosexual, or a Danish rugby fan, or a Dream Theater fan, or a gamer, or keep a blog on Xanga, or have a LiveJournal page all about kittens, or etc… Well, you might end up very, very surprised.

I’d never do that, though. I’m just saying I could.