Embedding and hotlinking images

  • I’m not absolutely sure what hotlinking an image is, but I know it’s considered to be unethical, perhaps illegal, and I don’t want to adopt unethical or illegal practices on my site. But why then does WordPress seem to encourage it via its “Insert from URL” media-library function? Or is this not considered hotlinking?

    Also, if hotlinking is bad why is embedding considered OK? I have the Embedly plugin on my site, which is very good. I can use it to embed a webpage, video, soundfile, etc, and apparently all that’s considered OK. But if I embed an image (as I would like to), do I thereby become a hotlinker and thus committer of unethical/illegal activities? Or is it OK to embed an image?

    Thanks for any advice on this confusing subject.

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  • Hotlinking is displaying any resource or file from another site on your site. Images are the main ones that people use, but videos, sound files, stylesheets, JavaScript files and more are all classified under the same banner.

    As far as ethical and even legal, that will depend 100% on the terms of use for each resource that you include. Some sites allow you to embed their content, and some acively encorage it. other sites hold their copyright very dearly and don’t allow it at all. There’s no one answer that can cover all options because there’s just too many variables.

    It’s up to you to verify that any item that you embed on your site is allowed (legally and ethically) to be embedded on your site. if you have any concerns I’d suggest that you talk to a proper copyright lawyer as any advice taken off the intenet about this (including my own post here) should be taken with a grain of salt and not considered to be “law” as such.

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