WebHostRight

Sometimes when a website is making reference to information held at another website not owned by them they may link to an image, some other media file or an article and may feel that this is quite innocent and that it’s ok to do.

In many cases it is ok, for example if you provide a link back to information elsewhere then most websites are glad of the mention and appreciate you linking back to the original article that is on their site.

But say you see an image or some other media file and you decide that you’re not going to copy it to your hosting account after getting permission to use it but you will just directly link straight to it, well this kind of practice is not so welcome and it may upset the owner of the other site, especially if you start linking to a ton of photos, as this will begin to eat up bandwidth that the other website owner is paying for.

Some websites dont mind you using some of their content, they will even say that it’s ok to reuse content from their site, but they generally dont want you to do it in a way that uses up their bandwidth, what they may do is provide you with ways that you are able to use something from their website in return for a backlink from your site to theirs and what they provide to you may be setup in a way that facilitates this.

Some websites are setup so that they heavily rely on content from other websites, where it’s all hosted at other servers, not owned by the website presenting this content, but ive always personally thought that this is a less ideal way of running a website, because if for example an image, video or article gets removed from a server then its suddenly gone from your website too, it can lead quite quickly to a website with lots of dead links and missing content, making for a rather messy and disappointing visitor experience to your website if you work this way.

I see many websites using a lot of yotube videos, but of course these videos can be removed from youtube at anytime, so eventually as you’re clicking your way through a site with these youtube videos its not unusual to come across dead link after dead link.

It’s amazing sometimes the amount of files and content that gets linked to from other sites where the original content owner would prefer that it wasn’t directly linked to, and that permission was given first, regardless of how reference and attribution is given.

I personally prefer that when in doubt about whether i should link to anything, that i get permission, that way i feel a whole lot better about using what it is that i want to use and how the original owner states that it can be used.