>>miiiii+(OP)
It was interesting seeing all the image hosts in the old days. ImageShack, PhotoBucket, etc
They'd either die because they couldn't afford the server bills or die because they went commercial. Some left gaping holes in forums etc when they changed.
>>bluedi+9b
What was really funny was people image leaching off of blogs and personal sites and the owners replacing the image based on the referral header to troll the forum users.
>>morkal+Wg
SomethingAwful was infamous for doing this and sending goatse. You could get banned on forums back in the day if you hotlinked images to SA, so... effective strategy, it seems.