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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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