Is hotlinking legal? - GoFuckYourself.com - Adult Webmaster Forum

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dbavaria

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#1

Is hotlinking legal?

11-18-2005, 04:21 PM

First off I know hotlinking is a nasty thing to do and it is in effect stealing...But what keeps people from hotlinking? Is it legal to hotlink, I've heard of it as copyright infringement - but then why do sites like fusker still exist if they break copyright in 100,000s of cases? So I take it that it is legal?

...confused...
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spacedog

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#2

11-18-2005, 09:56 PM

It is theft.
A) Bandwidth theft
B) Content theft
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dbavaria

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#3

11-19-2005, 12:51 AM

Yeah it is theft, but is it legally theft?

Can someone point me to some kind of lawsuits, rulings or legal documentation defining the practice of hotlinking as illegal?

As long as you refrence the site isn't it legal - and if the owner of the copyright dosen't want you to publish it then they can just complain to you and you must take it down correct?

Isn't it like quoting a book in an article you write? As long as you give due credit and the author dosen't complain it is ok?

note: im just trying to logically think this thru, i know its theft in a practical sense and it is hurtful to hotlink...but im just curious about its legality.

Last edited by dbavaria; 11-19-2005, 12:52 AM.
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Beaver Bob

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#4

11-19-2005, 01:32 AM

I wouldn't do it without permission first.

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mikeet

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#5

11-19-2005, 10:43 AM

Originally posted by Beaver Bob

I wouldn't do it without permission first.

Well spoken
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spacedog

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#6

11-19-2005, 02:32 PM

Originally posted by dbavaria

Yeah it is theft, but is it legally theft?

Can someone point me to some kind of lawsuits, rulings or legal documentation defining the practice of hotlinking as illegal?

As long as you refrence the site isn't it legal - and if the owner of the copyright dosen't want you to publish it then they can just complain to you and you must take it down correct?

Isn't it like quoting a book in an article you write? As long as you give due credit and the author dosen't complain it is ok?

note: im just trying to logically think this thru, i know its theft in a practical sense and it is hurtful to hotlink...but im just curious about its legality.

Using a quoted excerpt from a written work & giving credit is legal under fair use law, however, no such ruling exists for other works. The fair use law only applies to the written word, & only when an excerpt, not the entire work.
Where an image is an entire work as a stand alone product, there is no fair use law, & simply giving credit does not give anyone the right to display it. To display a copyrighted image, one must always obtain written permission, no exceptions. And to answer your question, yes it legally is theft.
If your looking for rulings & cases, look up Perfect10 VS Google.

Google faced lawsuit from Perfect 10 for indexing copyrighted celebrity images.

For more info on copyright, check this; http://www.copyright.gov/title17/
also look up digital millenia copyright act

Last edited by spacedog; 11-19-2005, 02:33 PM.
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dbavaria

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#7

11-20-2005, 01:40 AM

I plan on reading through the copyright link you gave me in a sec, but on your citing of Perfect10 vs Google, google was not hotlinking it was indexing copyrighted images and hosting them on their own servers, so that would be a totally different case.
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djcoral_1

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#8

11-20-2005, 05:36 AM

Would you want someone hotlinking your content?
No matter the legalities, I think it is also a matter of personal integrity.
If you want to do this for the long haul, and stand by your work you shouldn't even consider "hotlinking". Be like everyone else just play by the rules,spoken or unspoken.
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vvq

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#9

11-21-2005, 09:10 AM

I'm curious about the legal issues regarding hotlinking as well. Yes, it's frowned upon and not welcomed for the most part. But is it illegal?

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dbavaria

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#10

11-21-2005, 02:09 PM

djcoral_1, its obvious hotlinking is frowned upon, especially in the adult site world, but im still confused about the legal implications of hotlinking.

I've seen several forum posts where people talk about using DMCA against hotlinkers yet I have not seen any legal documents that refer to hotlinking specifically. How does DMCA protect webmasters/content owners against hotlinking?

In the past atleast 20 thousand sites have been ripped by fusker, if they actually had a case against fusker under DMCA wouldn't alteast one of them sue and put an end to fusker?
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