Sorry; I did a lousy job explaining what I was trying to say. Hotlinking is putting a tag into a web page (like the OP did) that causes an image to be displayed in your browser. The link in "hotlinking" is telling the website where to pull the image file from. In this case, it is not coming from the ETS webservers, nor the computer of the OP. It was coming directly from the tops website. Thus my comment on bandwidth. Also valid is the point in the email that tops sent on the matter, which is their image being used to bait-and-switch a knockoff product elsewhere.

Linking to their site, that is putting text or an image that links back to them, is quite OK and they like that stuff. When someone hotlinks an image, hosted on their server, on a website not under their control, they cannot create or change any clickable link to go to their site, or anywhere else. All they have the power to do is change the image (which is still being called by the outside website) to inform viewers that the image being posted is coming from their site. The admonishment is directed at the poster/webmaster that has inappropriately hotlinked their image; not at the viewer.

Sorry for the confusion, tech-speak, and long-windedness. I'm just trying to clarify the matter from an uninterested third-party perspective. And I'm still not sure if I've done it well...