Well, perhaps you know more about how the Internet works than I do. All I know is that other folks in the past have posted images (also hosted on other web sites, such as photobucket), and the admins have asked them to take the images down, and replace them with links.

You could do that as well, by replacing the (img) (/img) tags with (url) (/url) and the pictures would still be on your web site, and we could still go look at them.

In any case, I was going by what has been said on this site before, and what the administrators have asked others to do. I have no quarrell with you, I just want to help the folks who so generously host this web site for us.


Stovebolt forum guide to posting pictures
Quote
Due to functional considerations we much prefer that you link all pictures, which means viewers can click on your 'hot link' to see the picture if they wish. If you put them 'inline', meaning they're displayed directly in the post, then every viewer has to see them every time they go to that thread. Our server is made busier than necessary, and dial-up users may be discouraged from returning to the thread to view others' responses. If you feel it's necessary to include the picture directly, please use small images only, such as the thumbnails some hosts provide, which link back to the full size picture, and consider those dial-up users when you're inclined to put a large number of images directly in a post! And a great advantage to linking to an image ... you can make the image as big as you like since it opens in a separate window!