cooler, I am really not trying to be inflamatory, but you have a bit of a contradiction in your view. If deep linking steals your bandwith, then the obvious solution is to let the Dutch guy host a copy of your models. Actually, the more, who host them, the happier for your bill from your ISP. This is obviously not what you mean. By posting a downloadable model on your homepage, you can set rules for its use: for non-commercial, for commercial use etc. and indeed most modellers do just that. But as long as you have it freely downloadable on your page, a deep link with a clear reference to the origins is according to the sources I have quoted above probably not an infringement (at least not of US law) Copying the model and passing it of as ones own would be. As far as the copyright laws goes, there is no difference between a piece of software, a 3d model and a newspaper article. The real issue lies somewhere else. The real issue is about decent behaviour and politeness. Even if I maintain that you cannot legally protect stuff from deep links, I would hate it if the many fine modellers took their stuff off line. I for one do not know what I would have done without Kozaburo's hair to mention one fine example. So what we need to do is to maintain some moral principles inside the community. Among those is the one about asking before you link to a specific model. Who knows, maybe the modeller would let you post it (thus avoiding the bandwidth issue completely). It is on this background I proposed people to write the guy in the Netherlands and talk the matter over with him. On the general issue, I do believe that deep links and making reaources available to other people is what keeps the internet alive, The 3d community is a great example of just that.