I'm afraid I have to disagree with you. Bandwidth costs money. If I link to an image on your site and people start linking to it, I'm costing you money via my use of your bandwidth. If that isn't theft, what is?

So, how is one charged for bandwidth, exactly?

Most people do not host their servers at home, on a fixed-bandwidth line. Most people who have blogs either use blogspot or have their blog hosted by a hosting service. If you are hosted by a hosting service, you are charged a fixed price per month, which includes rental on whatever server hardware (and sometimes software) you are using, some fixed amount of disk space and some fixed amount of bandwidth. Generally, the bandwidth and disk space are enforced by software so that you cannot exceed them (though many also allow you to burst higher than the nominal limit for short periods). You can, however, pay more money to get additional bandwidth and/or disk space (or, for that matter, services), and some contracts have a scale where you pay $X up front, plus an additional $Y for each megabit of bandwidth above that.

That said, it is also the case that the web was designed around a promiscuous model of access, since it was built on the promiscuous access model of the Internet. This is not dissimilar to the promiscuous model of the phone system: a line can send traffic (initiate a call) or receive traffic from anywhere (receive a call). With special equipment, you can control who can access the network channel. If you set up a server to be publically accessible, by definition you are setting it up to take traffic from anywhere.

The web server will generally (unless it is specially configured) answer any requests that come to it. If I host a web server, and on that server is an image which is externally accessible, someone can put a link in their web page to an image whose source is on my server. This has the nice side-effect, for the person pointing to my image, that when someone loads the image, they are using my bandwidth to get the image, instead of the bandwidth of the server referring to the image on my server. (This is a lot clearer with a picture, which I'm not going to go draw at the moment.)

The problem with defining this as theft is that it is indistinguishable from defining any access to the server as theft. For example, when I view Andrew's blog, I am using bandwidth he is paying for. When Andrew posted the comment above, he used my bandwidth, as well as his own (and that of a number of parties in between). How is this theft, since it's how the web is designed to work?

OK, so if that's not theft, then how is it theft for me to view an image on someone else's server? If they didn't want me to view it, they shouldn't host it on a publically-accessible server. And if I can view it, why can someone else not view it? And is it any different that they view it directly than that they view it because it was referenced from a document on my server?

Now, it can be very rude to embed in a document on my server, an image from another server. It can be rude because every time the web page is loaded by someone, the image is also loaded, and that uses up the bandwidth of the person hosting the image. Copying the image, though, can also be theft. Well, no it can't, since it doesn't deprive anyone of their property, but it can be copyright infringement. It is not necessarily easy to tell when it would or would not be copyright infringement, actually, since the image formats used on the web generally do not have any way of embedding information on the copyright status of the image. Legally, it is safer to reference the image.

The problem really is that there is no natural law for virtual property, because virtual property does not arise in nature. Most human law is based on natural law, or is written to override natural law. (In fact, that is where copyright law comes from. In nature, anyone could copy anything without depriving the author of it, and thus it cannot be theft.) What aspect of human behavior in a state of nature models interconnected information networks? There isn't really one, and that is why there are disputes about this issue, and file sharing issues, and domain name disputes (is it an address or property?) and the like.

That said, it is perfectly reasonable to do what Steven did, and configure the server to not send files over a certain size unless they are referred from a certain server or set of servers, or are directly accessed. It's just not, by any way I can reasonably define it, theft.

Jeff,

There is a difference between visiting a site and using their bandwidth, which is an expected use of bandwidth, and placing an image on your site that uses someone else's bandwidth. If I come to your site and you've chosen to post large images that use a lot of bandwidth, that's your choice. If I then link to one of those images and embed it in one of my own entries, that seems like theft to me. People who come to my site will now use your bandwidth, even though they will probably never visit your site (especially if I don't credit you). Isn't that an unauthorized use of your resources?

In technical terms there is no difference. Lack of anticipation on one person's part does not equate to theft on another person's part. To take analogy to the limits of its ability to be useful, would it be "unauthorized use of your resources" for me to sit on your lawn? Would it be theft? Probably yes and no in that order. Certainly my linking to an image on your site, particularly without attribution, could be rude and could even be unauthorized, if you specifically and conspicuously ask people not to do so. There are measures, as Steven has taken, to prevent the abuse, and those methods are reasonable. I wholly support them. But I still see no way to define this as theft that does not also define legitimate usage as theft. I'm willing to be proven wrong, and I'll issue a challenge:

Provide me with a definition of bandwidth theft which prohibits linking to an image on a site, but does not prohibit a legitimate usage of that site.

If you can find one, I'll be glad to concede the point. I cannot find one.

It isn't really theft in any legal sense. I would not attempt to actually prefer charges against anyone becaues of it. (Although in fact it might actually be possible under certain statutes relating to "theft of services" which were written to cover things like illicitly gaining access to premium cable channels without actually paying to do so.)

But I think it's important to point out that I didn't invent the term "bandwidth theft". It's one of those phrases which is now in common circulation which represents a certain concept, even if it doesn't literally describe it. A similar case is "email spam", which does not actually refer to delivery of canned processed meat to your home via electronic mail. New terms for new concepts often don't make literal sense, especially around computer people.

In the online world, with a fairly community-oriented idea originally of providing content, the basic idea was that everyone would try to be good citizens. A given person would put material on the web, and others would respect that by not abusing it, and by using that web site in the manner that the owner intended. In this case, I have spent quite large amounts of money to purchase my own server, and I pay quite a lot every month to pay for my high-speed connection to which it's connected, and I do those things because I want to use that server as a way of delivering my own writing to the world.

It's a high-tech form of vanity press, really. I don't charge anyone to access my site, and I don't accept any contributions. But when someone links directly to an image on my server, especially if that link is from a high-traffic page elsewhere, then every time that other page gets loaded by someone, part of my bandwidth is used up, and they don't see the article I wrote in which that image appeared. So some of what I'm paying for is consumed without fulfilling the purpose for which I spent the money.

In the extreme case it can reach the point where it's preventing people from actually accessing my site to read the things I put on there.

Which means that it's bad netizenship, even if it isn't legally theft. It's abuse of my generosity. It means that someone is breaking the tacit bargain. I can't take them to court, but I don't think there's anything even remotely wrong with me using the capabilities of my server to prevent it.

Others who have been in the same situation in the past came up with the term "bandwidth theft" as a short phrase to refer to this kind of abuse. While the term is not precise, it is short and at least moderately represents the reality of the situation. Strictly speaking, there's little law in cyberspace; but there are conventions and a collective agreement about what is and is not valid use versus abuse of what we all provide to it. Within that collective agreement, this kind of abuse is reasonably similar to what we mean by "theft" in meat-space.

Once a term like that comes into common usage, there's no really good reason not to keep using it, so when I made that graphic I did. If the graphic had actually contained an explanation of why I wasn't permitting access, it would have ended up being a much bigger file, which would have defeated the purpose. The only way I could make it as small as it was (around 1K) was by limiting the text, so I used the conventional term already in circulation.

But I didn't invent it.

One further point:

"Provide me with a definition of bandwidth theft which prohibits linking to an image on a site, but does not prohibit a legitimate usage of that site."

I can't see why I'm required to provide you with any justification whatever for what I do on my server.

You are, obviously, under no obligation to justify your use of your server to me. I didn't realize that was even close to an issue. Anyway, I actually think that your solution to the problem is not only reasonable, but fairly elegant.

Analogies have their power because they adapt known terms to cover new situations. But they can be abused, and there is a constant attempt in some quarters of society to devalue language for what can only be described as political reasons. Using a loaded term which already carries strong disapprobation makes a new (and less damaging) activity seem worse. Calling the issue bandwidth theft is like calling music sharing theft. It isn't, though "bandwidth theft" is actually a better analogy that calling fair use theft. If you called it "bandwidth rape" I'd be saying the same things.

Just because there is some component of (perceived) violation doesn't make it rape. Just because there is some component of undesired use of resources does make it theft.

"Once a term like that comes into common usage, there's no really good reason not to keep using it"

Yes there is - it's inaccurate. 'nuff said

I have a definition of theft that makes hotlinking images "bandwidth theft."

Theft is taking something from someone without permission. For instance, if I walk out of a store with a gallon of milk before I have paid for it, I don't have permission... ergo, theft. If I pay for a gallon of milk, then walk out of the store with it, I have recieved permission to claim ownership of it. In exchange, I gave permission to the store to claim ownership over part of my money... ergo, no theft. In the case of Steven Den Beste's server, he has given permission for people to use the bandwidth that he pays for if they use that bandwidth to view the HTML and any images referenced by the HTML. He has not given permission for using his bandwidth in order to view only his images without the HTML... In this case, he considers loading his HTML into people's browsers as payment for use of the bandwidth.

Also, being on another person's property without permission is a temporary theft of property called trespassing. Yes, borrowing and returning something without permission is still theft, even if it is just space.

In short, if the owner says that it is theft, it is theft.

But if you've taken the milk, you've deprived the owner of both possession and use of the milk. Similarly, if you trespass, you've deprived a person of the use of their property to the extent that you are using it.

If linking to someone's images are theft, though, there are a few questions that have to be answered:

1. If I call you on the telephone, have I stolen your phone service? Phones also run on bandwidth, and because only one phone call can be active at a time on any given line, there's a more clear-cut case there than for internet bandwidth, which is shared.

2. If internet linking is theft, have I stolen only the "last mile", or have I also stolen from SDB's service provider, for the parts of the bandwidth that I've used of their networks as well?

3. Finally, have I stolen the bandwidth, by giving out the address, or has the person viewing my web page stolen the bandwidth, by viewing it? After all, SDB's image would not come to my server, nor even onto my lines. It would be directly downloaded to the browser of the viewer.

The reality is this: the internet is a commons, while each individual server on the internet is a property bordering that commons. By running the server, you've created an enclosure. By putting up a firewall and preventing people from accessing your physical network lines, you've created an enclosure. But at the point that you allow people access to your enclosure by opening up a port, you have granted an easement. There's really no other rational way to look at it that doesn't pose numerous questions which could not be answered rationally for both physical and legally created property.