koyaanisqatsi(a)nupedia.com wrote:
Ed wrote:
Then someone decided to remove the ability of
ANYONE to make in-line
links to external images. I noticed that when the "mediator" cartoon
gracing my user page disappeared.
Yes, that was at my provocation: b/c of the goatse man; b/c borrowing
bandwidth is rude; b/c some programs and browsers (sensibly, I think)
kill offsite images. I thought it would be a benefit to quit using
inline images? :-)
A couple other good reasons which may or may not have been mentioned in
the previous debates, but which were in my mind when I agreed:
Reliability: The site with the pictures may yank, move, or change the
images without notice, or block third-party access, and *poof* we lose
the images.
Reproduceability: A mirror site, backup, or CD-ROM version should be
able to take the pictures with it, with or without a net connection to
the outside for the reader. Linking offsite images makes this harder.
Legality: It's much more inviting to link an offsite image of dubious
copyright status than to upload one and put it on our server, but if
it's _inline_, we are still for all intents and purposes republishing
it, possibly in violation of copyright. (IANAL)
-- brion vibber (brion @
pobox.com)