Well, all of us except for Mr. Wolfe, I think.
I disagree. A big corporation throwing it’s weight around doesn’t equal redeeming value.
This entire thread could have been avoided if the blogger would have just said where the photo came from. 
As an attorney, you must understand that you are misstating the state of copyright law, the state of the law concerning linking on the web, and also any “courtesy” requirements.
There is no copyright violation implicated by the link in the OP. Nor has the OP violated any explicit or implicit requirement of the law or “courtesy” to offer information. As the operator of the website, in fact, it is your obligation to make sure that your website is set up so that relevant information is displayed.
envirocr has requested that this thread be closed. We don’t normally do this for someone other than the OP (and sometimes not then). However, the OP’s question has been answered, the ancillary issues have been thoroughly hashed out, and I’m sure envirocr’s understanding of copyright law has been greatly enriched. That being the case, if the OP has no objection, and no other pertinent questions arise, I’ll close the thread a little later as a courtesy to our new member.
I think he’s saying if Ticketmaster doesn’t like it, it must be awesome. Not the opposite.
Not an intellectual property firm
I had fun looking at the photo and trying to figure it out. This could be a fun thread to do in the Game Room, trying to determine a location from a photo.
I don’t believe the thread should be closed based on envirocr’s misunderstanding of what a link is.
Now I have a headache.
But I do value the Valletta of the Law.
Googling ENVIROCR HCM turns up a link to an interesting forum discussion about an invalid password and being banned, apparently related to accessing certain cough video content. Perhaps that forum has a different understanding of copyright?
Just to add one point to the legal discussion – even if the picture had been reproduced without consent in violation of copyright, there is some question about fair use worth noting, as it was obviously someone trying to identify what locale a picture was of, where reference to the picture becomes a necessity.
However, there is the issue of “theft of bandwidth” – a private family site with a low but adequate bandwidth cap might have legitimate grounds to protest a popular site’s linking to a graphic on it, and therefore drawing on its bandwidth allowance every time the other site was accessed. I doubt that would be an issue here, with an embedded link in one thread on a discussion board and a professional site with presumably higher bandwidth cap. But it can be a concern – if Fark or Digg embeds a link, someone’s bandwidth allowance can be consumed literally overnight.
NO FUCKING WAY!
If the thread was going to be closed anyway, that’s one thing. But it would be horrendous precedent to close a thread at the request of someone who marches in and spouts a load of crap on an issue completely unrelated to the OP.
By closing this thread, you’re rewarding him for what is nothing more than a hijack.
Very, very bad form.
You might want to read a little closer.
I said that if Ticketmaster doesn’t like it, then it must have some redeeming value. I can’t stand Ticketmaster, and anything that is inconvenient for them is a good thing, as far as i am concerned.
I have no objection to closing the thread. I appreciate everything I’ve learned from today’s discussion.
But that’s not what happened.
The OP didn’t hotlink an image, because the SDMB setting don’t even allow inline images. If the image was hotlinked, and was therefore called from the other server every time someone opened this thread, you’d have a point. But it isn’t. It’s just a link to the image.
And Fark or Digg or Slashdot an mess with your bandwidth allocation or your server capacity even if they do nothing more than provide a direct link to your homepage or a content page. All it takes is enough people clicking that link to bring the site crashing down.
I don’t know that there’s necessarily a lot of discussion left in the OP’s topic, but it rubs me the wrong way to see this thread closed under these circumstances.
Quite right, and I’ve thought of this before as well. Maybe one of us should start one such thread.
FWIW The tapatalk app I use to view SDMB does turn some links into embedded images, depending on how you link to it. The link in question didn’t, but a later link in this thread came up as a picture of the google logo. It is possible to have a URL on the website be an image on the phone. Whether that changes anything is beyond my scope.
I’ve started such a thread here.