I am the developer that worked on the site in question. Let me firstly state categorically that neither myself nor anyone else within my company was responsible for this hotlinking. Furthermore, when I became aware of this I immediately contacted the client and advised them that this was not good practice and left their site vulnerable to external influence, and that all affected product pages should be amended as soon as was reasonably possible. To be fair to the client, this hotlinking was attributable to the naive actions of one of its staff who I believe didn't really understand the consequences of what they were doing.

The subject of this thread is a valid one and there should be more general awareness of this practice which, although not illegal, from an ethical point of view is dubious. However, where there have been sensible and sound comments made by the likes of Merlinpa1969, others have chosen to advocate the publishing of potentially offensive images or have chosen to make totally unfounded and defamatory remarks about the designers of the site. It shouldn't need pointing out that such comments could possibly lead to legal action being brought against them. You must remember that this is public forum and as such you should always consider carefully before posting your comments.