Quoted: This is the World-Wide Web, in case you hadn't noticed. You're supposed to link to things!
|
That's not really true. Even if I offer my images for the public to use as they wish you don't have a right to use my bandwidth to display images on your site. Look at your own ISP's TOS and I bet there will be something about linking to content from another site without the owner's permission.
No matter, it is simply considered good manners to ask permission before displaying content originating elsewhere on your own site.
It may still be somewhat improper but I will grab any images I want to use on my website or here and display them locally (my machine with my bandwidth) so as not to abuse someone else's bandwidth.
One time I noticed a bunch of hits on my site originating from Live Journal for a picture of a Christmas tree I had. I went to the site and found someone was using my picture of my Christmas tree and writing that it was a picture of their own tree. The site wasn't getting alot of traffic and the person seemed rather pathetic so I left it alone.
On another case however someone in Japan used one of my images on a site generating over 8000 hits on my site. I discovered it after coming home from work in the evening and it had already sucked about 1.2GB of bandwidth from my site. THAT one I stopped cold by renaming the image. Really pissed me off.