Dealing with Deep-Linking to Your Online Photos?

Pig Hogger asks: "I've had my own hobby website since 1993, and over the years it has expanded to be quite a reference for the domain I am covering (some pro websites list it as additional reference, and so does Wikipedia. Google page-ranks it amongst the top). Every so often, I peruse the logs, most especially looking at the referrers to see where people come from, and once in a while, I notice that some webloggers deep-link to an image on my site. I do not mind too much when it's on-topic, but when it's not *AND* it's sucking-up bandwidth, I tend to be irked. Or worse, when you can't go look at the referring page without registering on the weblog site. In those cases, I change the picture filename (and the corresponding webpage that calls it), and I substitute a smaller (and most often, naughty) picture. What other tricks those of you are facing the same problem have to address this problem?"

Comments

irked?

[Anonymous Coward]

> I do not mind too much when it's on-topic, but when it's not *AND* it's sucking-up bandwidth, I tend to be irked.

And you ask this question on Slashdot? Why don't you tell us the URL?
We will show you what deep linking can feel like.

Here's what I did

[Sentry21]

I have a file called bestgif.gif on my website - simply put, the best gif ever. Then Mexicans started putting it in their sig on these huge forums, and my bandwidth went up near a few gigs a month (from almost nothing). So...

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://pkpidgeot.com/.*$ [NC]
RewriteRule .*bestgif\.gif$ http://sites.darien.ca/temp/.tubgirl.jpg [R,NC]

I'm willing to bet their accounts got suspended when suddenly their sigs contained a large picture of a large woman spewing a fountain of shit into the air.

My bandwidth usage drops off completely soon after I add a site to the list.

Re:Here's what I did

[Sentry21]

For reference, it's this gif that I have that gets linked to.

I was thinking of linking my copy here and setting the rewrite rule to 'if the referer isn't slashdot, show tubgirl', but then people would copy/paste the links to their friends, who would get an unpleasant surprise.

Either way, the link I provided above seems to be webspace on an ISP's server. I'm sure it can handle it.

Switching images is far more fun

[jgaynor]

Blocking is easy enough nowadays, but switching images is far more fun. I had this image in my gallery, from when a bus at my university crashed into a dorm. Before a recent football game, a fan from Uconn found this image and used it in a 'we're gonna kick your ass'-type post on their athletics message board. So I saw this in my logs and removed/changed the image to this one. The post was then filled with 'wtf' comments and was pulled a day later :).

Re:Switching images is far more fun

[Mmm coffee]

I used image switching on a site I was working on, only my image was a bit more disruptive.

Create a 1px x 1px transparent gif and open it in a hex editor. I forgot which bytes exactly to change, but if you change a some of the 01's to FF in the first X bytes, you can create a 64kX64K pixel GIF file that weighs in at roughly 100 bytes. Use that as your switched image, and you will have lots of laughs as you see the hotlinker's sites 50 screens wide by god knows how many screens tall. It makes any site totally unreadable and costs almost zero bandwidth to boot. Works for me. ;)

Uh Oh!

[Anonymous Coward]

In those cases, I change the picture filename (and the corresponding webpage that calls it), and I substitute a smaller (and most often, naughty) picture. What other tricks those of you are facing the same problem have to address this problem?"

Does this mean a goatse or tubgirl link will get you modded up "+1 Informative"?

A sad day, indeed.

duh

[nuggetman]

all you need to stop people from stealing your images is a no-right-click javascript. sheesh.

Re:duh

[RevDobbs]

Jebus Chrisp, man, you've just created a copy protection circumvention device! Off to the gallows with you!

Dont block them ...

[vrai]

... redirect them to one of the GNAA/goats.cx style shock images. Nothing will discourage (most) webloggers from deep linking to your images more than turning their precious 'blogs' in to gay scat porn sites.

Re:Use a CGI script to block them.

[raju1kabir]

Because cookies aren't accepted by all browsers, and are blocked by every paranoid lunatic on the internet.

That's why I gratuitously make sure my site requires cookies.

There's no virtue in lunatic paranoia if it doesn't come at a cost, and I'm here to levy that cost.