Hotlinking is the stupidest, laziest an most selfish way to share pictures online.

I'll try to explain this to you.

Hotlinking means means that some fellow uploaded a picture online that you came across and really want to share. And instead of saving the picture to your computer and upload it to your own host, you instead right click on it, choose copy and then paste it where you want it for example your blog or a forum.

This is not nice. I'll tell you why.

The original source (where the picture was originally uploaded) has something called bandwidth. Bandwith is the signals going in and out every time a person enter a site with this picture and the picture loads and shows. For example, if i put a picture on my blog, every person who visit my blog will see this picture, which is approx 300 people every day. So I have to provide enough bandwidth so that everyone who visits my blog can see it.

However bandwidth isn't free, traffic online isn't free. 

My picture server (a host) is Photobucket. I pay a fee, and in return they store my pictures and handle all the traffic my pictures bring. Thanks to photobucket you can see all the picture on my blog and that i post in this forum. Thanks to photobucket you are able to load and see everything I post.

But then some people are lazy and don't want to pay. They think they can use someone elses uploads. So they right click on a picture, copy it and paste it someplace online. This means that suddenly my server have to deal with all the traffic on that persons blog or forum too. Every time my picture shows up on someone elses blog, I have to provide its traffic. This sound little, but it's not. It giant. Everytime ONE person takes a picture, hundreds of people will see it, find it interesting and repost it to thousands more people. It's a chain reaction without an end.

Some file hosts has a protection for this. Again: bandwidth. Some filehosts limit their bandwidth, so when too many computer in this world load a this picture it stop sending out data and the picture is unable to load. That means if my bandwidth is exceeded because people are stealing my bandwidth by hotlinking to my pictures, the pictures in my own blog won't load either and my blog is ruined.

This is important for every internet user to understand. You MUST understand this. 

Everytime you hotlink from 4chan or hellolace you are stealing THEIR bandwidth. I know both 4chan and hellolace don't accept when people hotlink so the pictures you post will be blocked to prevent their whole forums and sites to completely crash under the pressure of people spreading their pictures, using their bandwidth. These people who have these sites payes a lot of money for servers to be able to run these sites. Don't abuse it.

I pay one cost a year and Photobucket provide me with needed space and traffic. Some other hosts like amazon S3 instead gives you the option to only pay for used storage and bandwith.(which meand a little traffic a low cost, more traffic a higher cost) This is great - if ONLY YOU use the pictures, but imagine other people are hotlinking, using your bandwidth and suddenly you end up paying for 20times the traffic you are REALLY using.

If you get your own space you will have a lot more control of the pictures. The picture will never be removed unless YOU decide to delete it. If however you hotlink you are dependent on the original source that he/she doesn't delete it. When he/she does, the picture disappears from your blog/forum too.

And this is the reson why we have so many useless empty pictures in this forum that doesn't load. This is the reason why I at least once a week have to write "we can't see your picture". Exceeded bandwidth, blocked bandwidth from sites who tries to protect themselves and deleted sources.

Please STOP hotlinking.

Get your own host and upload the pictures you want to use, instead of go through others, stealing bandwith and get a very fragile and low quality on everything you post.

Some sites offers free space, like photobucket, but it's LIMITED. It can mean two things:
1. You use the temporary upload, without making an accout. They will store the pucture for you for a few month and then delete it. OR 2. You make an account, you can upload your pictures and they won't get deleted, but the space is very limited, if you upload a lot, the space is soon full and to upgrade for more space you have to pay.

Using option 1 ALSO means old blog entries and forum post will have picture that doesn't work after a while since the (again) original source is deleted. And noone likes to visit a blog or a fourm where the pictures doesn't work! It looks very shabby and amateur-like.

PLEASE. READ AND UNDERSTAND THIS. If you don't understand, read it again or send me a PM.

If internet is gonna be a nice place people have to start take some responsibility.

Thanks for writing this all up Zeruda, good info.

Anyone who wants to share pictures and wants to do so from a well-visited site, such as photobucket (everyone knows photobucket goes down after like 10 people view the same picture on there, bleh) or 4chan or whatever, just save the picture to your disc and use
http://imgur.com/
It's fool-proof, anyone can use it. Just upload your picture on there and share it on here. Or something.

I know I hotlink, but I mainly do so from sites I know can handle the attention.

Photobucket has never deleted my pictures and I've been using it for years. They just have a limit on how many pictures you can have uploaded, so you can go delete some pictures yourself to make room for more, but I've never had them actually do it. 

Some people upload pictures without an account. It's just a temporary upload and then the pictures disappear. Some people are afraid to make accounts, so i thought I should mention it. There's no way round it.

i use photobucket and i have like hundreds of photos! lol.....i didnt even know you can 'hotlink' lol thanks for the info.....you learn something new everyday :D (i'm not gonna start tho lol)

do you think facebook can be used to host pictures ?

It's a free social networking site and you can upload as many pictures as you like, they have about 30,000 servers I think.

Yeah, I upload photos on my own Facebook account to link them to blogs and websites. 

Concerning Photobucket and TinyPic and sites like that, a lot of times you can have free accounts. It's just if you upload hundreds of photos every day that you might need to pay for more bandwidth. I have a free photobucket account and it's awesome.