Ahhh, I remember the good old days of forums where people would "hotlink" an image into a thread, and after enough people started viewing/forwarding that link around it would break because the image hoster's account would get suspended by their host for going over their bandwidth limit, or the original hoster would panic at their bandwidth costs and delete it and/or try to block hotlinking going forward. Maybe something like IPFS could solve this problem soon, but right now freely available image hosting on these centralized providers is the most reliable it's ever been.

On Discourse (open source forum software) we default new install to downloading hotlinked images so we can prevent this very specific problem.

But isn’t that copyright infringement?

Maybe? I'm not a lawyer and I would be surprised if they consulted one before implementing that feature. But unless the license for the file limits access it seems like they're just acting as an almost-proxy for these images, and not misrepresenting their ownership over them.

I'm not a lawyer, either, and have an honest question: how would a download of the image to cache it differ than a download to view it? They're performing the same action (downloading the bits). But, one stores it for later download by others, the second displays it (and maybe gets cached locally in a browser cache, making it look sort of like the first case...). Does intent matter? Is there an implied protection in that you can download for personal use, but cannot distribute? Does that break down on a multi-user computer? i.e. what if I download the image and my computer shows the cached image another user?

Well I believe it's a difference of redirection vs redistribution.

Say you're talking to someone who can teleport instantly across the globe. If you tell him where he can see the Mona Lisa, that's OK. If you grab the Mona Lisa and wave it in his face, that is very un-OK.

Before someone replies with the "but digital items can be copied, it's not stealing", that's the argument most piracy enabling forums and websites are able to get away with. If you host, EG, Nintendo ROMs on your website, you'll get shut down quickly. If you just save links (URL or Magnet), you might get a DMCA for a specific item maybe, but won't get shut down entirely, probably.

As always, there are a lots of exceptions and alternative interpretations though.

No. It’s called hot linking.

I always loved it when someone hotlinked to an image on someone else’s server and instead of taking the image down, they’d replace it with something funny (or more frequently, horrible).

The Web wouldn't be a reliable "web" if that behavior were widespread.

I loved it when the web was less reliable.

Something something about goats. ;)

Even with IPFS, you're pushing off infrastructure to someone who probably has some hidden incentive to provide that infrastructure.

Why not just charge the 100th visitor per minute or something? Someone will be motivated to pay the cost. And, if people don't want to pay? Well, even those with less motivation will find a way to the content somehow.

Aggregation and distribution are virtues of large communities, not small ones. The sophistication of Facebok's business is what allows the creation and distribution of content. I agree that if Facebook, Snap, Pinterest, Reddit, Nextdoor, Twitter etc, didn't exist, small communities would fill that void... But they would do through a fragmented and siloed user experience that is hardly discoverable for the majority of the connected world.

This is the equivalent of running a taxi business vs running an airline. Sure, a taxi can fulfill several transportation needs but it could never replace what an airline does.

> ...small communities would fill that void.

For a short time, and the overwhelming majority of people would have no idea that content exists. Then some enterprising startup founder would realize that there's a huge market for those exact services, and history would slowly repeat (rhyme with?) itself.

This free content, sans big tech pipedream is just that. Sorry if that makes you sad.

Once upon a time Google Search was there to help you find those small online communities.

You're moving the centralization problem to google, then.

So, which do you want? A go-to place to see <insert arbitrary interest here>, or a ton of smaller forums and communities?

Have many smaller ones and aggregate them by yourself with RSS feeds.

And the vast majority of the internet-using populace, who will never figure this out, can just go screw themselves?

Yeah, it's incredible complex to figure out. (/s)

People on this site continually underestimate the ability of users.

I mean, yea it is.

My mother is not going to set up a RSS feed for herself of a list of forums that interest her. She does know how to log on to Facebook and look at the feed.

With decent RSS support at the browser level, the experience isn't meaningfully different.

- See interesting page -> click the Facebook follow button to get it added to your FB feed

- See interesting page -> click the RSS button to get it added to your RSS feed

You're wrong. That exact thing existed before, and that's not what happened.