Very Rough Guide

When I go to the library I regularly check out what computer books are sitting on the shelf. Some books seem to be there every time I go in, such as iTunes 6 and iPod for windows and Macintosh. I usually end up grabbing one or 2 books on something I am at least vaguely interested in. I usually end up flicking through them over a month, and forget most of it a week later.

On my latest visit I picked up The Rough Guide to Blogging, by Jonathan Yang. I wasn’t expecting to learn a lot out of it, but I hoped that there might be a few little gems or at least 1 thing that I didn’t already know.

In general the book is ok. If you are new to blogging there is quite a few things that you can learn from reading a book like this. It seems to be pitched at people who use computers to get a job done, not geeks - that’s cool. You shouldn’t have to be a geek to read a book on a topic such as blogging.

Unfortunately the book’s target audience probably isn’t as well versed in convention and netiquette as a geek would be. As a geek reading the book I found myself thinking “hmm” on a few occasions. Then I found a wtf?! show stopper on page 79. Here is the quote under the heading “Loading images from other websites” (my emphasis):

You can use an image from elsewhere on the Web without copying it to your server. Simply find the address of the individual image (not the page it’s displayed on) and use the IMG tag in the usual way.

Before posting an image on your blog, however, it’s best to ask for permission from the copyright holder. In reality, nothing is likely to happen to you for using an image without permission - especially in the case of celebrity photos and other commonly circulated stock photos - but at the very least it’s polite to ask before using, say, a drawing from an artist’s website.

Generally hotlinking is considered by many as a copyright violation and bandwidth theft. Most webmasters don’t approve of others using their content and bandwidth without permission. Not so long ago, US Senator and potential Presidential candidate John McCain found out what happens when you hotlink. There are numerous other examples of disgruntled copyright holders and webmasters taking action against hotlinkers.

Given the size of the copyright notice in the footer on his site, Jonathan seems to take his copyright pretty seriously, pity that his respect doesn’t seem to extend to others’ works.

Update: I emailed Jonathan a link to this post and he has replied.

Thanks for reading and reviewing the book. The section you referenced about “hotlinking.” Definitely not good blogger etiquette. I should probably post something about the importance of not only asking permission but also hosting your own images. I hope I meant “use the images, but host them yourself” but clearly the text doesn’t reflect that.

Further Update: Jonathan has posted a clarification post on his blog (since moved to a different URL).