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Hey there, I'm starting to write some movie reviews - so I'm linking to an image on IMDB. For some reason I can see the images perfectly but when guests visit my site they see blank space. I even tested this out on my work computer - nothing showing up. Is there something to do with caching on WordPress that I need to know about?
I've looked through the FAQs - sorry I can't find the answer. Is my link incorrect to IMDB? See my latest post for an example.
Cheers and thanks for the help.
Annabel
You have 3 broken image links from your page.
You see it because you have the image cached in your machine.
I would check the IMDB to see if hotlinking is allowed - because that's what you are doing. Some companies don't care, others do.
I'm seeing them, but, speaking as someone who works on television station websites, I'd recommend removing them immediately or getting WRITTEN permission for their use. The content you're showing IS copyrighted (and probably trademarked) property. See this link for the IMDB terms and conditions:
http://imdb.com/help/show_article?conditions
They're not kidding about this stuff. If they're really nice, they'll probably just ask you to remove it. However, there's no requirement for them to do that. They can just jump straight to a lawsuit--which opens up the slim possibility of WordPress being named in that suit. Even if it's later dropped or dismissed, it's still time (and possibly money) that you (and possibly Matt) would probably rather use differently.
Not that it would make a difference, but you don't even have the images linking back to the IMDB website. BTW, because those images are actually being fed to your page directly from the IMDB web hosting server, the location of your page is already showing up in their web stats. So, again, I would suggest removing them immediately.
And unlike many free blog hosts, you do actually have image hosting space here. Not that I'm encouraging anyone to steal images from other sites, but if you do want to include pictures on your blog there's no need to hotlink them from elsewhere.
The use of DVD covers are allowed under fair use as long as you cite where you got them, the fact that they are copyrighted, and who in fact owns the copyright. There's case history on this one.
I would not being hotlinking from IMDB though. As Wank says, we have space here plus you'll never know when they (IMDB) may change what's in that picture. :)
You might also consider the WordPress terms of service--especially paragraph five:
ptyguy, read the post above yours. :)
Even Wikipedia uses them.
You're right. Stuff like that just worries me.
Hi there - thanks for the heads up. I used to work at abebooks.com some years ago and dealt with copyright/fair use etc for book covers. It's interesting to see that much of the same arugments are still being used.
I've taken down the covers for now will work on this over the weekend.
Thanks again.
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ayouens
