After Lensman's Reality Cash announced that hotlinking was legal under 2257, someone posted this from a mainstream board at GFY. Pretty much goes over who is really the producer of images appearing on your site if you don't operate the server that sends them.
I'm not going to get into a shouting match here over this. I just wanted to see what you guys think. Nobody was really able to refute any of this there aside from.... "if it appears on your page then you published it" type stuff. I'm kind of looking for more than just that in looking at both sides of this.
Here's what the supposed "expert" in this area said...
The entity responsible for sending the data to the browser is the publisher regardless of whose webpage it appears on.
Webpages are not marked by resemblance to PDF files or the like in that what appears on the screen is not contained and served in a single file. It is remarkably unremarkable that a single webpage have multiple publishers.
Illustrations of this include third party content services that webmasters may deploy such as stock tickers, ad agencies and RSS feeds. The approved direct linking (i.e., hotlinking) of images also falls into this "third party content services" category.
Since you asked for a technical explanation as to why this is, here it is in simplified terms.
1) Browser submits request for source code file from server.
2) Server grants request and sends source file to browser containing page layout and recommended content information.*
* Any content that a source file directly contains or links to is considered recommended since it's display is ultimately the decision of the user or browser.
3) Browser processes source code and renders initial layout (e.g., tables) including textual content within the source file.
The role of the main webpage ends herein even though direct links have yet to be requested, granted/denied or processed.
4) Browser requests image data from image server.
5) Image server grants request and sends image data to the browser.
To be considered the publisher of any data, you must be the entity receiving the request from the browser, making the decision to grant or deny the request and finally the one to send the data.
Throughout this process the main webpage did not take part in any of those three events. So we conclude that they can not be the publisher of the images.
However, this is dependent upon no contractual agreement being in place for the image server to distribute images owned by the main webpage. A webhost can not be considered a publisher. In that case, the main webpage would have control over the image server and they would be the publisher of any direct linked images on that server.
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Originally Posted by Lee
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