Hotlinking is the practice of embedding links on your Web site to images actually stored on other people's Web sites. While it seems like a way to save on your bandwidth and disk space, in effect you are stealing bandwidth from other people when you do this. And we pay for our bandwidth every month.

The number of hotlinks to SF-FANDOM's avatars (the most popular images in our network) has grown to such proportions that, when we look at our daily Web statistics, the SF-FANDOM numbers are dominated by hotlink referals. It's become impossible to determine who is actually linking to SF-FANDOM by way of reference and who is stealing our avatars and bandwidth.

We're not a large commercial operation. We're not making a profit with this network of Web sites. It's a rare month when the affiliate commissions pay the hosting fees. So we don't appreciate people using our resources for their own benefit.

To counteract that theft, we have decided to put the thieves to work for us. They have become our marketing representatives, as all their stolen images have now been replaced by one which tells people to buy Understanding Middle-earth by Michael Martinez.

Some people catch on to this switched image and they stop hotlinking immediately. That is just fine by us.

In the meantime, if you're looking for something interesting to read, try Understanding Middle-earth. It is one of the best researched books on Tolkien you can buy. It is certainly going to be one of the most recommended books on the Web for the foreseeable future, thanks to all the hotlinkers.