: If I cache an RSS feeds' html, but not the images, will this appear to be image hot-linking? I have a simple RSS news application built using JavaScript, that pulls in feeds through Google's
I have a simple RSS news application built using JavaScript, that pulls in feeds through Google's feed API. I'm doing a proof of concept and caching the feed using localStorage though due to storage limitations, I only store the HTML and not the images.
When I load a feed from cached html, and the images are merely img tags pointing to the source content - is this distinguishable from hot-linking an image? If so, is there another way I should go about this? Or - does this even matter?
Edit: To avoid any possible confusion, I am not attempting to hotlink content. I am trying to use syndicated content according to the terms of use (according to Google's feed API). I am caching the content to speed up the application, and only cache it for as long as is allowed according to each feed's policy (if set in the HTTP header). I am merely wondering if this is the appropriate way to handle this content, and if not, what would be an appropriate alternative.
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In short, yes. If you display HTML in a page on your site, which links to images hosted elsewhere, then that is by definition "hotlinking", and is not distinguishable from any other form of hotlinking. It makes no difference whether it's in the original HTML source or loaded via Javascript, the browser should send the same headers including the 'referer' [sic].
However, there is not necessarily anything wrong with what you are doing. It depends on the Terms of Service of the originating website and if they allow their feed to be syndicated on other websites. Google's ToS only controls use of the API itself and I assume specifies that you are responsible for legal rights of any third party content.
In practice though, I can't see it being a problem. The worst that could happen is they block image requests referred from your site. To mitigate this, make sure to link through to the original website so that you are not stealing their content and image bandwidth for no return.
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