2009/8/6 Brion Vibber <brion@wikimedia.org>

On 8/6/09 11:20 AM, Rayson Ho wrote:
> I found sites hotlinking photos on Wikimedia... is there a place that
> I can report them??

We strongly encourage reuse of our materials, and we don't mind hotlinking.

The nature of the web itself is very pro-linking; "hotlinking" is the
natural way to use an image on the web that exists in a stable location.

I'm happy from this since I currently use hotlinking from Commons into web communities, forums and so on. More, if I have some interesting personal picture to share into a community, and I presume that such a picture could be useful to any other user of the web here or there into the net, I usually upload it into Commons then I hotlink it. So, a "free hotlink policy" can directly encourage upload into Commons; nevertheless a good categorization (a very difficult aim) is mandatory, and this aim could be difficult to obtain when the uploader is mainly interested to hotlink his uploaded file. So, while encouraging "free hotlink policy", I advocate any effort to ameliorate categorization and to make it easier and easier.

--
Alex