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here is a common misconception that everything on the net is available for free. Unfortunately, that just isn't so. The material on this web site, unless explicitly marked otherwise, is not free for you to re-use. More importantly, linking directly to images on this site is not permitted. Let us explain a little bit about why, because we know a lot of people do not understand it.
    Let's say you have a small amount of space on your web site host. There are some pictures here you'd like to use in your page, but you don't want to upload them to your storage area, because you don't have a lot of room. So you put something in your web page like this:

<IMG SRC="http://www.fractalus.com/gallery-content/large/9.jpg">

This is really really bad. For starters, you're using one of the images here without asking us about it. Even worse, though, whenever somebody views your page, they download the image from our server. And although you might not pay when people look at your page, we absolutely pay every time someone looks at ours.
    Obviously, we know that having people look at our site is going to cost us money. That's why we take special care in building our web pages, so that we can present our art in a manner we're comfortable paying for. And when you link directly to an image on our site, you are displaying the image in an entirely different context, one that we didn't choose. And you're making us pay for it. This tends to make us irritable and crabby, much like a two-year-old who hasn't had an afternoon nap.
    It would be nice if we could simply ask people not to do this sort of thing, but far too many people do not seem to understand that this is a problem, so we've been forced to alter our server to refuse as many improper requests as we can. If your page is broken because you linked to an image on our site... we're sorry, but we're unlikely to change how our server works. If we're going to make this site available on the Internet at all (by paying hundreds of dollars each month) then we're going to have to choose what we're willing to pay for, and putting pictures into other people's web pages isn't it. Our pockets just aren't that deep.
    If you want to use any of the images on this site for your own site, you must ask first. Permission is only granted in particular cases. If you want people to see the image, you may link to the web page containing the image, with a normal <A> tag. If you want them to be able to get back to your site, have the page open in a new window by including TARGET="_blank" in the link tag. But don't link directly to the image, and don't put the image on your own site without permission.

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