Comment by stordoff | Hacker News Reader

Comment by stordoff | Hacker News Reader

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The creator of imgur (MrGrim on Reddit) has said on multiple occasions that hotlinking is acceptable way to use imgur:

Four years ago - "I created imgur because the other image hosting sites forced you to see their ad-ridden pages (TinyPIC). I would never do the same to you. If you want to direct link to the image, then by all means do so."[1]

Three years ago - "People linking to the page rather than the image is what keeps imgur going. If everyone linked to the direct image then imgur would have no source of revenue. However, I want people to use the service however they want, and by no means would I ever force anyone to do it one certain way. So, I like it when people link to the page because that's how imgur makes money, but you don't have to do it if you don't want to. I'm just happy that you like the service."[2]

One year ago - "No, I don't think [restricting hotlinking] will ever happen. At least not that I can foresee."[3]

[1] http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/9tlwi/im_the_imgur_guy...

[2] http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/eicjf/im_the_imgur_guy...

[3] http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/y81ju/i_created_imgur_...

It was already stated, but Imgur was created by a redditor, for reddit. Facebook already is an image host, twitter is too.

I get free access to a usenet server for being inside my ISPs network. Others have to pay to use the same server if their outside the network. It's the same deal.

imgur was created by someone for reddit and digg on the same day.

IMHO, "hotlinking" isn't the same as directing people from social media directly to an image url. You can still put <img src="http://imgur.com/..."> on your web page and it will still work. The context of doing that is different from pointing someone directly to an image with the intent of showing it to them.

And how will that continue to work when if it goes beyond Twitter, G+, and FB? Most browsers send a referrer in HTTP GET for the img tag. It works now for those because google and facebook grok the html, pull out the image, and cache it.

In an <img> context, your browser should send an appropriate Accept header[1]; this can be switched upon in the backend to select the appropriate representation (e.g., to serve an image rather than HTML). So hotlinked images should continue to work, while normal links will redirect to the HTML wrapper.

--

[1] Though, rather unfortunately, most browsers do not seem to send reasonable Accept headers. See https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/HTTP/Content_negoti..., "Default Values" and "Values for an image".

Uh, well if it went beyond direct links from social media then it probably would break hotlinking. Hasn't done that though -- not yet, anyway.

In your estimation, when did the definition of hotlinking change to what you portray?

And '640K is more memory than anyone will ever need.' Business models change and in reality there are no free lunches. Just because they say something in the past doesn't mean it can't and shouldn't change.

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