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Bandwidth theft, Hot-linking and Direct linking

Bandwidth theft is a big problem on the web.
Many sites are having their bandwidth stolen from them
without even knowing about it. Images, sound files,
videos, etc. are being hot-linked by bandwidth thieves.

Bandwidth theft is linking of images, scripts, sound files,
movies or zip files to your site from another site's server
without the website owners knowledge or consent.
This uses that website's costly bandwidth without permission
or payment to the original site owner.
This is considered to be bandwidth theft, also known as hot-linking or direct linking.

(For Example)
If you use someone elses domain name, IP or URL address
in your html codes to display an image on your site,
without first saving the image to your own computer
and then uploading to your own server space,
you are stealing someone elses bandwidth.
Some people sre unaware that they are doing this,
but most people of those who are
stealing bandwidth are very aware of what they are doing.

Unless you do have permission to direct link from a website
(for example: using codes provided from a site for their topsite list,
button/banner exchanges, etc) linking files from
somebody elses website without permission is bandwidth theft.

Our Web hosting includes a feature called hot link protection.
If this option is turned on, it will prevent other sites from stealing your bandwidth.
it is very easy to enable hotlink protection using the control panel provided
included with your web site. just click on the link that says
HotLink Protection and enable it.
HotLink protection prevents other websites from directly linking to files
on your website. Other sites will still be able to
link to any file type that you don't specify (ie. html files).
An example of hotlinking would be using a <img> tag to
display an image from your site from somewhere else on the net.
The end result is that the other site is stealing your bandwidth.
You should ensure that all sites that you wish
to allow direct links from are listed in the hotlink protection section
of the control panel after you enable it.
This system attempts to add all sites it knows
you own to the list, however you may need to add others.