Um, Sorry, But You Don't Get To Sue When Somebody Moves Images You're Hotlinking

from the so-many-stupid-people dept

While courts around the world have come to different conclusions on the legality of hotlinking -- placing an inline link in a web page to an image hosted on a different web server -- it's a practice that's generally regarded as bad internet manners. The cases have generally focused on the sites displaying other people's images, but this point was apparently lost on one bright spark, who threatened the host of a site whose images he was hotlinking with a lawsuit (via Kottke.org) after the host took the original site down and deleted the images. Again, while courts differ on their views about hotlinking, it's pretty unlikely that any court would agree that the person doing the hotlinking has a right to the continued use of the images. This guy felt otherwise, at least until he actually spoke to his lawyer about it, who apparently clued him in. In some way, it's sort of disappointing that the guy's lawyer didn't want to move forward, since the suit would been pretty amusing.

Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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