Hotlinked Image Switch



On the Internet, there are a bunch of cool images. Most people are fine if they are spread and displayed, should the proper permissions and bandwidth be in play.

However, there are those (commonly called "leechers") who display images on their site directly taken from another "Hotlinked" or "Inline Linked", using the other site's bandwidth without permission for their own purposes. Of course, when the home site find this out, it's quite easy to change the image to something else. Hilarity Ensues. Usually it's just changed to a warning against using images/bandwidth without permission, but sometimes, snarky pranks or Shock Site images ensue.

This is why we upload images locally instead of relying on external sites.


 * Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal: The "National Organization for Marriage", an anti-gay-marriage group, hot-linked a comic from his site. The author responded by changing the image to one supporting gay marriage.
 * One guy hosted a "Grim Reaper Holding an Hourglass" image, that got popularly hotlinked (mostly via style template Hotfreelayouts helpfully provided to the connoisseurs of "very goffik" taste) from Myspace, but since 400 hotlinks/hour was a bit too much (apparently, Myspace pages work in an extremely bandwith-wasteful way - everything, including background gets reloaded on every visit), he ended up changing it to Goatse.cx image. Hilarity Ensues.
 * A 2004 LiveJournal April Fools' Day prank called "Operation: Jour de Poisson" featured a user spreading an icon in apparent support of the phrase "Under God" in the pledge of allegiance... switching the image to one supporting the exact opposite stance on April 1.
 * The (hilarious) way Cockeyed.com dealt with a leecher is here.
 * The John McCain Myspace site featured an update template which didn't give the requested credit to its designer, and leeched images from his site. He responded by replacing it with a fake message from John supporting gay marriage.
 * Conservapedia hotlinked an image of the Grand Canyon citing "Fair Use". The owner responded by adding text to the picture denouncing Conservapedia's beliefs and their hijacking of the pic.
 * The EVE Online WMG section of TV Tropes once hotlinked an image to the new galaxy introduced in Apocrypha. Upon finding it hotlinked everywhere, the author changed it to an image begging for the Naglfar-class Dreadnought to be buffed.
 * The evil forces of Enturbulation used this tactic against against the Guardian newspaper on one occasion. Specifically, when it leeched a picture taken at a protest against the Scilons from Britchan. They responded with Goatse. The exact course of events is documented in this video.