Dana Blankenhorn has a blunt and pragmatic response to a correspondent who says it is wrong to link to images on someone else's site: "if the content you're linking to is not in and of itself illegal, link all you want."
Not allowing things to be linked from your site is an option, but if your interest is in reaching people, which is why most companies and people put up sites in the first place, closing off links is foolish. Make your graphics compact to minimize bandwidth usage, if you have a metered server, but the commons is enhanced and everyone benefits when links are freely made.
If you have content you don't want anyone to see or that you only want to be paid for, put it behind a password. There are plenty of business cases for doing this, but when it comes to expanding your potential reach, be promiscuous with your server cycles and bandwidth.
Posted by Mitch Ratcliffe at October 9, 2003 09:24 AM | TrackBack