On 23/07/07, Marghanita da Cruz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Zhasper wrote:
> On 23/07/07, Tom Worthington <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> Even better; use the graphics from someone else's web site. ;-)
>>
>> For example Australian Screen credits a lot of participating
>> organisations and has their logos listed
>> <http://australianscreen.com.au/title-index/features/>. This does not
>> make for good web design, but if you have to have all those logos,
>> then you might as well reference the originals from their web sites
>> and save the load on your server.
>>
>
> It sounds like you're saying that a convenient way to reduce load on
> your own server is to make it some random third party's problem.
>
> What you're describing is called hotlinking, amounts to theft of
> bandwidth and resources, and is generally frowned upon.
>
> See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inline_linking and
> http://altlab.com/hotlinking.html for explanations of why. See
> http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/000278.html for a sample of the
> treatment you can expect if you persist in this behaviour.
However, in this case, linking to the logos, which belong to and are promoting
the organisations concerned, provides valuable direct feedback to these
organisation as to how much publicity they are getting through this particular
channel.
Point conceded. If your intent is to assist the organisation concerned
with "valuable direct feedback", and said organisation wants said
feedback, hotlinking is okay.
That said, it's something you should check with them first. They may
have limited resources, or expensive bandwidth, or something similar,
and might prefer that you hosted the images yourself. They may not
want to run the risk of your site being slashdotted, leading to the
DSL connection in their office (where their webserver lives) being
congested. Also, they may not understand what you're doing and you
might find yourself serving unintentional goatses...
The original poster's only rationale (unless I misread their email)
was to reduce load on MY webserver by making it THEIR problem. I don't
think that's covered by this (or Peter's) exception..
For example, see the Creative Commons code generated for inclusion on your
website by
<http://creativecommons.org/license/>
M
--
Marghanita da Cruz
http://www.ramin.com.au/itgovernance
Phone: 0414 869202
--
There is nothing more worthy of contempt than a man who quotes himself
- Zhasper, 2004
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