Reply #13: An image must be on a web server in order for it to show up on this message board

[blogslut]

When you copy the image URL, you are copying its web address. When you simply copy the image, that image gets temporarily stored in your computer memory, where you can do stuff like open Paint and click "Paste" and the software then pastes the image into the Paint window. Copying the image address allows you to paste it into this message board because that image exists on a web server.

However, posting an image taken from another's website is called hotlinking and is not normally considered proper internet etiquette because you are posting that image at the expense of the site owner's bandwidth. DU is a fairly busy website and, depending on the popularity of your thread, an image posted can sometimes result in thousands of computers downloading it.

I pay for web hosting and normally, when I post an image, it is one I have uploaded to my pay-hosted server.

This does not mean I am completely free of hotlinking. If I find an image from Wikipedia, TwitPic, Facebook, DayLife, a Major Network or one of the numerous free image-hosting services, I will post the image URL(s) relatively guilt-free.

As has been suggested in this thread, if you want to post images, open an account at an image-hosting provider, upload pics you've saved to your hard drive and then you can copy/paste those image URLs with a clear conscience.