Ultrabizarre
Inline linking is the use of an image on website A that is sourced from website B. It’s often criticised because website A benefits from the display of the image, while website B bears the cost of hosting.
I remember when I uploaded my first (non-logo) image for Pah2. Before then I had inline linked a half dozen images from corporate and government websites, something I had no qualms in doing. Since then I have moved to self-hosting those images to preserve my posts against external change.
I now host—unbelievably—296 images. About a dozen of these are popular inline links. I don’t mind. The linkers are usually diaristic bloggers with three readers and don’t impact on my bandwidth.
The most popular inline link is to the screenshot of Daniel’s ultrasound from three years ago. People use it in posts announcing their pregnancy and discussing their ultrasound. Now it’s true that all ultrasounds kind of look the same, but at the same time they are deeply intimate. So I think it’s kind of bizarre that people show off someone else’s ultrasound. I don’t understand the psychology. I wonder how far it extends: to baby photos? holiday snaps? graduation ceremonies?
It’s a bit like how companies show photos on their website of people hard at work: staged photos, of models pretending to work. People are not design elements!
By Sophie, 3 hours, 10 minutes after the fact
It’s funny that you say that.
I had someone contact me some time after Jordan died to ask permission to use an ultrasound photo of hers in a mock up presentation he was doing to an ultraound lab in California. He did a search and found it on my old blog. Although kind of flattered I also thought “what the?” I let him know that no, I didn’t want him to use the pic considering our circumstances. I thought it very strange… and yes, it makes me think about what pics I post.
By Thorne Lawler, 2 days, 23 hours after the fact
It strikes me that what you might have here is a simple test for measuring psychopathy: Ask the subject to construct an article or a webpage about something personal to them which requires pictures of people to illustrate its point. Rig the test conditions so it’s slightly harder to get photos of the people involved than to just use stock photos of someone else.
In case that remark wasn’t nerdy enough, I’ll also point out: Server-side restrictions based on ‘referrer’ value can be used to prevent hotlinking (or at least make it difficult) although I would imagine people will just save a copy.
By Bowie, 3 days after the fact
Imagine if the HTML 1.0 had allowed “hotlinking” of textual content?