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Comment by itafroma | Hacker News Reader

What gets me is that they aren't even re-hosted: they're hotlinks to other websites' imagery. Besides being incredibly lazy, leaching off of other people's bandwidth without giving them credit or placing the imagery in their original context by linking to the pages they appear on is just a low move.

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sigh

Yeah, you're both right. I'll move the images local. Not intending to leach. Just trying to lighten up an otherwise kinda depressing post. Seeing four years of work come crashing down.

As pg says, running a startup is like being repeatedly hit in the face.

Thanks, I appreciate it: I'm just not a fan of people not getting the credit for or benefits of their creative works. While I don't have an opinion on the use of the images, I can definitely understand where you're coming from and what you were trying to do.

Leeching bandwidth? Really? This is not 1999 anymore, no one cares if their images are hot linked anymore. Be ready to be surprised, people found ways of making money from hot linked images.

In 2012, I replaced an often-hotlinked image with a picture of something gross, just on principle.

Be ready to be surprised, the next link to a meme you click could be a gore-fest.

sheez man

Not true.

Some of us are still on shared servers or have limited bandwidth, or just care on principle.

When the leechers are popular forums it can be a definite tax.

Making a local thumbnail isn't that difficult, likely in whatever language you happen to use.

I would care. There's no excuse for your site affecting my server in any way. If it's a site that gets enough traffic the number of connections being made to my web server for a single resource could be enough to adversely affect my site. Besides why are you going to take the chance that the image stays online and in its current location. Just rehost it, it takes such a minuscule amount of effort.

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