Hacker News Reader

Comment by concordDance | Hacker News Reader

> Hotlinking in general is considered theft

This is a pretty puzzling idea to me. How could linking something be theft?

To explore this, I shall try a metaphor. Imagine you're on a big social media website (lets call it Programmer Olds) which has an oddity in that 99% of its users use adblock. You then post a link to another small (ad supported) website on your Programmer Olds page, causing a large number of people to click through and download the page using large amounts of bandwidth (for no monetary gain to the site) and possible DDOSing the site.

Have you commited theft?

View on HN

> This is a pretty puzzling idea to me.

That's because you're responding to an entirely different issue. "Hotlinking" isn't linking to something, it's including a resource that is hosted elsewhere. It's putting <img src="https://concordDance.whatever/images/big_image.jpg"> on my website without asking you. Now if my site ends up on the front page of HN, that could cause a lot of traffic to your site, potentially overwhelming your server or increasing your hosting bill. It's not nice, and rightfully frowned upon.

But from a loss and gain perspective it seems equivalent.

In both cases the site loses bandwidth for no gain due to your actions.

> causing a large number of people to click through and download the page using large amounts of bandwidth (for no monetary gain to the site)

The difference here is that while a lot of users use adblock, there are some that don't. These users can still see the ads. Additionally even though it's a small website, it may lead to new readers that stick around or the content itself may even be sponsored.

The equivilent to hot linking a picture would be like taking the content of a blog post without really linking to the source, because there's no chance of conversions there. If you're linking to the site itself then there's a reasonable chance that users can convert.

So I suggest that it's theft just because the chances of readers being converted is nil while you're using their bandwidth.

Let's say I own a restaurant. Someone comes in and wants a panini. I don't have a panini press, but the restaurant next door does.

If I tell the customer they can go next door to get a panini, I'm not stealing anything. Maybe that restaurant is packed right now and they'ed rather not have an extra customer, but there is a reasonable expectation that they would generally want customers or at least have a means of turning away unwanted customers otherwise.

On the other hand if I break into my neighbor's restaurant, make a panini, then bring it back to my restaurant to serve and make money off of, all without permission from the neighbor, I am most definitely stealing. Even if I doubt the neighbor will mind because he let me come over and make myself a panini once, I can't unilaterally act off that assumption.

Is adblock a form of theft?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com