Monday, April 16, 2007
One more thing
I have a quick question about web etiquette and plagiarism. If I link to a website in my page, am I taking up any of that linked websites bandwidth up? Should I ask them permission. I've incorporated a few websites into my websites via these links, and it feels like I am plagiarizing. I guess it's because I have not created the content, I don't know? Anyway, what is the netiquette for links? And what about pdf files? I've used others' pdf files in my own site? Do the same rules apply?
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3 comments:
I don't think there's anything wrong with linking to another website--the bandwidth-stealing more pertains to images. That is, you use an image on your website but not hosting the image on your server. I would imagine the same would hold true for pdf files--people want credit, and pdfs can be hefty (especially when compared to basic HTML pages).
Of course, you're supposed to get permission for taking work from another place and hosting it yourself, but you need not ask permission to link to a source.
Not that I'm condoning it--but if you must steal, at least host it yourself . . .
Ugh. I apologize for my poor grammar/usage above.
I would definitely credit the PDFs. I think it is pretty clear when you link to a site that it is another site and probably has a different author, but PDFs are a bit more slippery and your audience especially may not be very canny when it comes to discerning a document you created from something authored by someone else. Rather safe than sorry!
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