Question about uploading url images!

You’re not going to get a SWAT team abseiling through your windows if you hotlink images from other sites. But you are effectively leeching off other people, and they may get annoyed if you suck up all their bandwidth and/or if you infringe their copyright.

I would advise against doing it. Upload to your own space and/or give credit to the original where necessary.

Besides the image you hotlink one day, may be something entirely different another (ie nsfw)… if you know what I’m saying.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inline_linking

Most people might frown upon “hot-linking” to images on their site. You are in essence, stealing their bandwidth. I think it may be a common belief that if images are not within the public domain or do not fall under fair use interpretation, and I stress the word “interpretation”, as a cautionary measure, you will need the image owners consent to duplicate and or display it.

Don’t hotlink to images on another server. EVER. (unless they have a specific ‘hotlinking/embedding is okay’ policy, like Image Shack, Flikr and YouTube). Just … don’t. It’s wrong, and there’s no justification.

And while you won’t get a ‘SWAT’ team, many sites with images (mine included) have traced down hotlinkers and replaced the images with naughty pictures before blocking your IPs access to our sites wholesale.

Just DON’T DO IT.

As for fair use, each site SHOULD have their own site policy etc about copying images and what not. Remember that just because it’s online, doesn’t mean it’s fair game. ??

Thanks for the replys. I never really understood this since wordpress allows you to upload a image from another url. i would think that wordpress would say below it to make sure your abiding by copyright laws before uploading. By allowing that function some people, including myself might percieve it as its okay and legal.

I am aware of how it steals a bandwidth but I figured if it was another free wordpress.com blog then it might be okay.

I also always link back to its source. So is this still not okay?

I always just treated them as linking to a url. But as what you guys are saying is its still illegal, so I will remove them.

It’s ‘legal’ it’s just not generally a good thing to do.
And WordPress doesn’t stop you because there are situations where it’s okay. Like linking to your own images on your own server where you allow it.

There are certain situations where embedding externally hosted images is totally okay. Flickr, Image Shack and other similar sites allow you to do so, but it’s always best to check first.

Linking JUST with a URL is fine. Linking with <img src=https://someoneelses.server.com /> is less so okay, UNLESS the site’s good with it.

Basically, you need to use your brain, research some, and make SURE it’s okay before you do it ??