"Hotlink" (AKA: leeching, piggy-backing, direct linking, offsite image grabs) - A hyperlink to a media file (video, audio, Flash, image, etc.) on another site that bypasses any html pages that would identify the site or earn it advertising revenue. Prohibited on many message boards and blogs, as it saps bandwidth from the site serving the media and earns the disdain of the site's owners. "Hotlinking is not only bad etiquette, it's theft."

Files that are commonly Hotlink protected are:
     Images such as but not limited to:
          JPG/JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group)
          Exif (Exchangeable image file format)
          TIFF (Tagged Image File Format)
          GIF (Graphics Interchange Format)
          PNG (Portable Network Graphics)
          BMP (Windows bitmap)
     JavaScript (js)
     Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
     Documents such as but not limited to:
          PDF (Portable Document Format)
          TXT (Text file)
          LOG (Log file)
          DOC (Microsoft Word Binary File Format)
          DOCX (Office Open XML Format)
          XLS (Legacy Excel workbook)
          XLSX (Excel workbook)
          PS (PostScript)