Comments on: Hot Linkers are Bandwidth Thieves

By: UbuntuLinuxHelp

UbuntuLinuxHelp — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 12:45:28 +0000

@ffm
In this case it was hotlinking. There were 100’s of object hits (with no page visits – to any pages).
(I don’t believe that it’s an approved practice at their end. I think someone did it and there’s been no follow up to make sure they don’t hotlink).

By: ffm

ffm — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 23:47:13 +0000

@Roger
You mean “deep-linking”, no?
Hotlinking is when I link to an image on your site inline, which does steal bandwith.

Deep-linking is linking to a URL that is not the top level of the domain.
http://example.com/deep is a deep link. That provider still gets adsense, but they just don’t go through the homepage.

By: Vadim P.

Vadim P. — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 22:05:16 +0000

I remember seeing something like this, all pics were replaced by another one stating something. Like go to the original site or something.

By: UbuntuLinuxHelp

UbuntuLinuxHelp — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 19:07:08 +0000

@Joe
The images and content are stored on my server. When someone looks at the page on their server and click the link, that simply requests my images (and some code) to be sent to their internal site page. Nobody actually visits my page.

A “…normal every day link…” means someone clicks a link and goes to your page NOT to download the content and show it on their page (which is bandwidth theft).
They are not linking to me, they are accessing my content to show somewhere else.

Perhaps this link will help explain why bandwidth theft (hotlinking) is bad: http://grimthing.com/archives/.....ng-is-bad/

By: Joe

Joe — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 18:57:37 +0000

I guess I’m a little confused on this one. How are they Hot Linking [Wikipedia] to that page? If I read that Wikipedia article it sounds like there would need to be an image or something that they’re linking to. But if they’re just providing a link to your page that their users can click on to read your article … well that sounds like a normal every day link … what the Web was built for.

If their support people are using your “How To” to help a potential new Ubuntu user to get their sound working, then that sounds like something you would want to encourage.

Maybe I’m misunderstanding?