> We hot-linked to all those image hosts because we couldn't imagine them disappearing.

No, we hot-linked all those image hosts because we didn't want to pay to host it ourselves.

...and I had fun replacing images people directly linked from my server with less-- ahem-- savory images.

I enjoyed the emails I got from a couple people who were adamant I "hacked" their site because their "web developer" linked to images on my server... images that now said stuff like "I'm a loser bandwidth thief!", etc. (I never did use really nasty "shock" images-- just taunting stuff.)