so this is interesting,
my neighbor is a copyright lawyer with a specialty in digital copyrights and world wide web usage, i asked her opinion on hotlinking, there seems to be two sides of the fence her, however there is case law that shows that hotlinking is not copyright infringement. The question is at what point the infringement is actually taking place. she pointed out that what is exactly is happening when hotlinking is used is at the root of the argument.
according to the strict scene of the law,
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Copyright infringement (or copyright violation) is the unauthorized use of material that is covered by copyright law, in a manner that violates one of the copyright owner's exclusive rights, such as the right to reproduce or perform the copyrighted work, or to make derivative works.
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when one hotlinks to an image on another persons website, the person who is hotlinking is not copying the image at all nor is the image being distributed from the server where the hot link was initiated, the image is not downloaded and saved on the server.
lets use this server as an example.
when i use a URL to point to an image, say
http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/1...re_252_jw2.jpg
all i am doing is just pointing to the server and the location in the server that hosts the image, i have to click on the link in order to see the image.
when i type
[ img]http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/106326main_image_feature_252_jw2.jpg[/img]
and the image shows up like below,
the image is still hosted on the original server, i am not downloading the image to this server, nor am i downloading the image to my computer, the image is not being copied and stored or redistributed, as soon as i close this window, the window closes and the image is no longer being shown, it was not reproduced, and stored.
it was only framed through a window through your browser, and until you right click on it and save it to your hard drive, there is no copyright violation occurring.
on the other side of the fence, one argument against it besides the bandwidth issue is that by hot linking to the image, you could be said to be "performing" the the piece of art like playing a song on the radio, however there has yet to be a ruling that says that merely showing a original piece of art work like a photograph or painting is a copyright violation.
in case law Perfect 10 v. Google,
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Adult entertainment publisher Perfect 10 sued Google's Image Search service, arguing that Google violates copyright law by indexing Perfect 10 photos posted on unauthorized websites, then making and delivering thumbnail images of those photos in its search results. Perfect 10 also contends that Google should be held liable for any copyright infringement that occurs on sites that Google links to.
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Quote:
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In February 2006, the district court ruled in favor of Google on several grounds, but ruled against Google for its creation of thumbnails.
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on may 16 2007:
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2007/05...right-showdown
http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/Ke...sed_ruling.pdf
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Today's decision reversed the lower court's holding [PDF] that Google's thumbnails were not a fair use, following and bolstering an earlier image search engine precedent, Kelly v. Arriba Soft [PDF].
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and according to the complaint in Kelly v. Arriba Soft
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Arriba received
Kelly’s complaint of copyright infringement, which identified
other images of his that came from third-party web sites.
Arriba subsequently deleted those thumbnails and placed
those third-party sites on a list of sites that it would not crawl
in the future.
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Quote:
The district court granted summary judgment in favor of
Arriba. Kelly’s motion for partial summary judgment asserted
that Arriba’s use of the thumbnail images violated his display,
reproduction, and distribution rights. Arriba cross-moved for
summary judgment. For the purposes of the motion, Arriba
conceded that Kelly established a prima facie case of infringement.
However, it limited its concession to the violation of the
display and reproduction rights as to the thumbnail images.
Arriba then argued that its use of the thumbnail images was
a fair use.
The district court did not limit its decision to the thumbnail
images alone. The court granted summary judgment to Arriba,
finding that its use of both the thumbnail images and the fullsize
images was fair. In doing so, the court broadened the
scope of Kelly’s original motion to include a claim for
infringement of the full-size images. The court also broadened
the scope of Arriba’s concession to cover the prima facie case
for both the thumbnail images and the full-size images. The
court determined that two of the fair use factors weighed
heavily in Arriba’s favor. Specifically, the court found that
the character and purpose of Arriba’s use was significantly
transformative and the use did not harm the market for or
value of Kelly’s works. Kelly now appeals this decision.
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according to wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyrig...ng_and_framing
Quote:
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When an inline (img slink of an image is used on a Web page, it seems to be present as a part of the Web page that you are viewing. The presence of the image is only virtual, however, in the sense that the image file is not physically present at the server for the Web site being viewed. The actual location of the image file, if the image were that of the PTO seal, would be at the PTO server in Virginia. Use of inline linking has led to contentious litigation (discussed below).
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