aeiouy - 5:04 pm on Jun 27, 2006 (gmt 0)

I'm not a lawyer and nothing I say here has any legal value. But I know I disagree 100% with Vince's perspective. Framing is not like putting a piece of art in a glass frame. If I catch broadcasts from a TV channel and resend it to others, even if I modify nothing from it, I'm sure I'll get sued fairly quickly by the original b roadcaster.

Yeah but what if you just called up your friend and said, hey that commercial we love is on right now, tune in channel 3 and check it out.

You are not infringing on anything then... I think VinceVinceVince has an interesting point. By hotlinking or framing an image, you are not actually serving the image up to the other person. They are still getting the image directly from the person hosting it. So it does open up some interesting possibilities.

It would be like someone telling you, you can't link to a page on their site. You certainly can if you want to... All you are doing is pointing the person and their webbrowser to that site. I think the onus is going to have to end up on the holder to protect their images and properties to prevent others from redirecting people to them.

From this standpoint you are MUCH better off hotlinking than copying the image and re-serving it. From a moral standpoint I don't think sites should hotlink or frame images from other sites. That does not mean ultimately it won't be different.