But, bandwidth issues aside, you should probably add a “Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs License” to everything on your site, then you’d be safe, at least — that way, legally, people shouldn’t be allowed to alter your work and they must give credit where it’s due. (And this would go along with your already stated copyright at the bottom of the site.)

Anyway, in Andrew’s defense, he’s a pretty cool guy, so hopefully you two will connect.

Grace and peace,
AC

Sorry I didn’t respond to your email. I think my mailblocks.com spambot must’ve eaten it, for I don’t recall seeing it in my inbox. I apologize for that.

I’ve never thought about image hotlinking as bandwidth theft. My naivete is showing. I guess I hadn’t thought of it as much different than hotlinking to your site. The “bandwidth theft” argument doesn’t hold much water in my opinion, since servers all around the Internet are “stealing” bandwidth from one another day in and day out. But, we’re in the midst of many shifts in thinking about copyright these days, and copyright reform is much needed. I don’t mean to imply that you should simply give away your work. As Tim noted above, “You have a perfect right to offer your work under any conditions you like,” and I agree. Many people, however, see the role of intellectual property as changing. Thanks to the democratizing structure of the Internet, you have potential access to a larger audience than ever before, and hotlinking to your site, if done properly (with appropriate credit and ALT tags), could result in even more sales for your product — and certainly more buzz, more awareness.

If you’re in need of some reading material on this topic, I highly recommend Lawrence Lessig’s book, Free Culture. In fact, why not click and download the book right now? After all, it’s free.

AC

P.S. – In an effort to close the loop, I’ll also post this at Brownpau’s site.

I allow anyone to hotlink images from my site, however I’m in a very different position to Dave. If and when I find myself paying an unreasonable amount for other peoples use of my images, or I come to the point of needing to charge for my content, I’ll have no problem in stopping hotlinking.

Anyone that argues for complete, absolute freedom from copyright on the web argues for the abolition of common courtesy.

Final comment: we really need micropayments, so the sooner Yahoo or Google set up a collection facility allied to a premium search facility the better for content providers and users alike!