Inline linking, also known as hotlinking, is the placing of a linked object, often an image, from one site in a page belonging to a second site. The second site is said to have an inline link to the one where the object is located. It is used for such activities as linking images from personal home page storage into the online diary of the person controlling the personal home page.

This has sometimes been controversial because it is possible that the site where the object is stored and from which it is retrieved will not like the new placement or will consider it to be bandwidth theft. This term refers to the unauthorized use of someone else s bandwidth. Inline linking to an image stored on another site increases the bandwidth use of that site, even though their site is not being viewed in its intended form. Since bandwidth is a commodity, unauthorized use can increase the maintenance costs of the website hosting the image, hence the term bandwidth theft .

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