Robert said:When you post an image like the one's above, your actually hot-linking from another site. Every time the image loads, your using their bandwidth. Basically your costing that webmaster/company money. Although this can be prevented at the server level, most webmasters do not have the knowledge to stop it, so end up paying for bandwidth that's not associated directly with their site.
Robert said:In the hope that people download them and use them on their own sites and web space and do not hot link.
This is the reason Geocities banned hot linking, it was costing them a fortune in bandwidth.