Edited to Add:
I've been asked for a more detailed explanation of what "hotlinking" is:
If you grab the location address of the image from another site and use that address to copy the link here on
WI, that's hotlinking.
If you look at the code, it looks something like this:
[IMG]
www.somesite.com/example.jpg[IMG]
That means every time the page loads,
WI has to go over to "somesite" and grab the picture named "example". And, the server on that site has to go find the picture and give it to
WI.
Depending on the server size and processing speed of the two sites talking, this can cause a delay in the page loading. Just one image by itself doesn't cause much of a delay, but lots of hotlinked images can add up to be a major problem.
It doesn't just affect the page with the image, since it uses up processing resources on both sites, it can slow down the loading time of every page on the site.
Sites like tinypic and photobucket are fine for hotlinking beause they have super servers with super speed that are designed for this sort of thing.