Stealing Bandwidth

[Starlyte]

On the "Alcatraz" thread posted in the "multimedia discussion" board located here: CLICK HERE there was a question regarding posting images. Magikman had the following response:

We would much rather you download the image to your hard drive and then submit it using the 'attach image' option in the post. If you post an image directly from a website, you are contributing to bandwidth theft, as every view increases the bandwidth usage to the original site. Many webmasters simply cannot afford the increase in expenses due to the practice. There's nothing wrong with linking the page as you have done, bandwidth isn't used unless someone actually clicks on the link provided.

I'm having a little trouble understanding. Okay, so if I see a picture on a website that I want to put in my post and I right-click on the picture and copy/past the URL into the IMG button is that considered stealing bandwidth? I just wanted to be clear on this so I'm not one of the many stealing bandwidth.

Starlyte

[Saru]

Okay, so if I see a picture on a website that I want to put in my post and I right-click on the picture and copy/past the URL into the IMG button is that considered stealing bandwidth?

Unfortunately, yes. Every image posted that is hosted on another website, unless that site is your own, constitutes bandwidth theft. There are actually a lot of sites that link to images on this site, and collectively go off with a fair bit of bandwidth each month. Fortunately we have a dedicated server and this isn't much of a problem, but sites struggling to keep within their monthly bandwidth allocation on a shared host often have difficulties if other sites go off with all their bandwidth by remote linking to their files.

Bandwidth theft is actually very common indeed, and although nobody is likely to do anything more than ask for a specific linked picture to be removed, the best way to post a picture is through the image attachment feature on the forum, so that it's our own server hosting the file and not somebody else's.

[Starlyte]

Thanks SaRuMaN. That clears things up. I have been guilty of posting pictures using the IMG button and will not do so again.

[fulltimekiller]

I say the web site admin should do something about it. Theres is a few script that prevents people from linking pictures from another site Even if they don't know how to make the script the script is downloadable off the internet.

[Fenris]

I say the web site admin should do something about it. Theres is a few script that prevents people from linking pictures from another site Even if they don't know how to make the script the script is downloadable off the internet.

Rather stupid Idea as that would also prevent people linking to pictures hosted on their OWN sites! Do you expect the site admin here to host all the images for people? Are you willing to pay for the extra bandwidth that would require?

[fulltimekiller]

The script is design to prevent people linking picture while it allow the picture only to be viewed thru there own site.

[Fenris]

Ah, misunderstood you, yep to stop bandwidth being stolen from this site... good idea

[BurnSide]

Why not just remove the IMG feature and just have the Attchment feature? Wouldn't that solve the problem?

[Fenris]

Why not just remove the IMG feature and just have the Attchment feature? Wouldn't that solve the problem?

The script that fulltimekiller mentioned seems a good idea to prevent that though.

Now that WOULD stop people using even those images they have on their own sites Burnside!

And do nothing to stop people linking to images on this one, so people would still 'steal bandwidth' from UM!

[BurnSide]

People can post images from their own sites by having the images on their computers and simply attaching the image.

Although yes, it wont stop people from stealing the UM bandwidith, but my concience would be clear. lol

[Fenris]

People can post images from their own sites by having the images on their computers and simply attaching the image.

Although yes, it wont stop people from stealing the UM bandwidith, but my concience would be clear. lol

Huh, you miss the point.... with people able to link to pics on their own sites it cuts down the bandwidth use that UM has to deal with (Piccys use massivly more bandwidth than text)

[Saru]

Fortunately as I say, this site is hosted on it's own dedicated server, so the bandwidth lost due to bandwidth theft is extremely small. It is not at this time a big enough issue to warrant taking any measures to stop it.

[Scar]

Just to add to that , Attachments only allow pics of 50k, the IMG feature allows unlimited size.

Providing it fits into the length of an IE window Otherwise the mods will link it instead

Edited June 21, 2004 by Scar