# Why do web hosting services insist that all files be HTML-linked? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 4, 2006, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-web-hosting-services-insist-that-all-files-be-html-linked/359410 "2006-06-04T22:01:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2006, 11:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-web-hosting-services-insist-that-all-files-be-html-linked/359410/41 "2006-06-06T11:57:09Z")
> [@ParentalAdvisory](#): > > Just like I can max out my 1500 minutes of cell phone usage every month if I wanted to. The corollary would be if they gave you 1500 minutes but said “call anybody you want, but if you call your sister across town, we’ll disconnect you.” **Mangetout,** your description of different backup concepts might be what they are thinking about, but again, if I rewrite all the data daily for backup or web purposes, I can’t see why their disk, server or whatever cares as long as I don’t exceed the amounts I am paying for. One reason I didn’t look at other sevices is these two were the top two in a list of services in a review. When I saw the similar wording in their policies, I suspected other services might not be much different, and I didn’t want to spend all year reading fine print. We’ll see what happens in the next year. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2006, 12:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-web-hosting-services-insist-that-all-files-be-html-linked/359410/42 "2006-06-06T12:13:01Z")
> [@Musicat](#): > > **Mangetout,** your description of different backup concepts might be what they are thinking about, but again, if I rewrite all the data daily for backup or web purposes, I can’t see why their disk, server or whatever cares as long as I don’t exceed the amounts I am paying for. The point is that this pattern of usage would be atypical for a website, and that’s what they’re relying on - so in a way, your hard limits would be something they’d be quite happy for you to bump up against once in a while, but not something they want you to push all the time. I agree though, that the concept of fair/reasonable at a lower level than the signed-for package limits, is inherently absurd, but it’s a marketing trick that seems to work. ---
**Author:** ![galt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/35a633/32.png) [@galt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/galt)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2006, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-web-hosting-services-insist-that-all-files-be-html-linked/359410/43 "2006-06-06T15:06:37Z")
> [@Musicat](#): > > [Nearlyfreespeech.net](http://Nearlyfreespeech.net) charges $1/GB of data transfer. Since I need about 50GB/month, that would cost me 6 times what the other services charge, since I can get 100GB for $9/month. NFS may not fit your usage, but the point stands; you have options. > [@](#): > > I’m making no claim, I’m not suing anybody, and it seems that many services have the same rules. I just want to know if there is any logic behind their rules, since I can’t find any. Saying, “it’s their ball, they can make the rules” might justify them but it doesn’t explain them. Agreed. I think the bottom line is that you’re absolutely right to question this rule, and their reasoning for making this rule is likely **not** very sound. It’s like they said: people who abuse our service _often_ do it by putting large unlinked files up, as opposed to hosting pages with links to large files. We can’t think of much of a reason to allow unlinked files at all, so let’s forbid it in order to inconvenience the abusers. No matter that it’s trivial to work around their policy if you want to be an abuser. No matter that it’s a burden on their legitimate users (hey: it’s trivial to work around it, right? ;)), this is what they decided is a good idea. ---
**Author:** ![XJETGIRLX](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/9fc29f/32.png) [@XJETGIRLX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XJETGIRLX)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2006, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-web-hosting-services-insist-that-all-files-be-html-linked/359410/44 "2006-06-06T19:58:59Z")
Perhaps it’s an issue of liability? As strictly a web host, if something happens to your data they can tell you that you should have a local backup of your entire web site. However, if you’re just using their storage for your backup files and it gets deleted, they don’t want to be liable. ---
**Author:** ![kushiel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/bbce88/32.png) [@kushiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kushiel)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2006, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-web-hosting-services-insist-that-all-files-be-html-linked/359410/45 "2006-06-07T22:14:52Z")
> [@Musicat](#): > > Exactly my point. However, I think the degree of “abuse” is important to them. An entire domain of MP3 files with no HTML links that looks like a data dump = abuse. An entire domain of MP3 files linked from what looks like a typical web site = peachy keen.I just accessed my site thru FTP for the first time since setup, and found dozens of such files and directories (CGI-BIN, IMAGES, PRIVATE, etc.) already installed by the hosting service by default. Most of these aren’t linked, either, and it would be stupid to do so, so obviously there is a lot of leeway. > > I really don’t think it will be a problem for me, or for a few dozen orphaned files that might exist, but it’s the philosophy that puzzles me. > Then I consider it false advertising if they guarantee N GB of storage, but don’t allow me to use all of it.Makes no sense. If I am paying for X server load, don’t I get to use what I am paying for? Besides, I can pretty much guarantee that if I dump a hard drive for a backup, it will get a lot LESS traffic than my very active web content does. My backup gets zero traffic from others, and none from me unless I need to recover something – even then, I am likely to download each file only once. Many of my web site files get thousands of downloads daily.That’s a workaround, of course, even one suggested by the tech. But it doesn’t address the philosphy behind the policy. It even makes a mockery of the idea. > > Either there is more ignorance behind this than meets the eye, or there is something that no one has yet hit upon. If you upload a 1GB backup, you’ve used 1 GB of bandwidth right there. If you retreive it shortly after, another 1 GB. If you are just serving up HTML files with moderately sized images, it takes a damn long time to reach 2 GB of bandwidth used, and you’ve reached many, many more users. They are just trying to cover their own asses. Honestly, unless you have the same 10 .mp3 files draining a few gigs of bandwidth a day, they won’t care. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-web-hosting-services-insist-that-all-files-be-html-linked/359410.md?page=2)