koyaanisqatsi@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)