Many free hosts disable hotlinking due to bandwidth concerns.
I must be missing something fundamental. Hotlinking is pulling images from a remote host into your webpage? Doesn't your webhost serve your HTML page to the user's browser and then the browser pulls the remote image directly from the remote host? Thats why CNN & other sites take longer to load because they are waiting for the remote adverts. I thought that your browser pulled together all the pieces, for hotlinking to be an issue it is the host that pulls together the pieces.
Thank you for your patience.

Well, when an html page loads, it just looks for the images that you tell it to, when you create the page. If you tell it to look on another server, on the other side of the earth, it will look there.

If one does this, bandwidth from the server on the other side of the earth is used every time that picture is shown.

The fact is whatever server the images (or other data) are stored on takes a hit whenever those images (or other data) is called.
"Taking a hit" is defined in this case as: When a request comes to a server for a file, the server spends resources looking for it, then using the data transfer lines (T1, T2, or whatever) sends it at the expense of the server's owner to the requestor. It doesn't really matter what webpage or server the file is on to the browser. It does matter to the person paying for that server. They have the right to say who gets served what.
Therefore people who make webpages and pay for hosting for those pages deserve to have those images (or other files) used on only on their pages. NOT SOMEBODY elses pages.

I allow hot linking for my friends on one of my sites because I can afford the bandwidth. I do this for them to use in their sigs when they post on message boards. I would probably remove their images and pages on my server if I found out they were linking to them on webpages elsewhere. I don't mind being used, but I won't be abused.

On another site, I disallow it completely and clearly state that the "public use" images are to be downloaded to their HD, then uploaded to their own web space if they would like to use them.
If they do it anyway, they are in for a surprise, because I used mod_rewrite to swap the desired image to a "less suitable" one when a file gets called from a server that is not my own.
:D
Bottom line: You pay for the server, you call the shots.

The main reason free hosts do not allow hot linking is that they get their income from the ads on the free pages. If an image is hotlinked, the bandwidth is being used, but no ad is being shown in the process.

I believe SpocksBrain may be under the impression that hotlinking is disabled from external hosts. IOW, he may be under the impression that the free host will prevent links in his pages that are hosted on the free host from including code that links to images on OTHER servers.

I could be wrong, but I think that's why he doesn't understand why hotlinking is disabled on a free host.

PH, That's what I thought too.
You can call images from other servers to your webpages. That is usually not monitored or disallowed.
But I thought a few facts were in order:
1) The other server you are calling on may disallow it.
2) If the image is yours, (not stolen) it should be on your server anyway.
3) The browser has nothing to do with where the images are called from. It just reads the codes, and displays the page.

Originally posted by hostpath.com
I believe SpocksBrain may be under the impression that hotlinking is disabled from external hosts. IOW, he may be under the impression that the free host will prevent links in his pages that are hosted on the free host from including code that links to images on OTHER servers.

I could be wrong, but I think that's why he doesn't understand why hotlinking is disabled on a free host.

Thanks, I had it **** backwards.