Is it possible to put something in the .htaccess so people can't remotely link to my images? Is it also possible so that if they do link to them, that a different image loads in it's place?

I'm seeing a few instantance of people copying my code and just pasting it and leaving links back to my spacer gifs and such, the idea that eats my bandwidth doesn't make me happy :)

If it is possible please let me know how, thanks!

There should be a script.. I forgot if it was java, php or what.. but it'll prevent bandwidth or images from being stolen.

try www.hotscripts.com

no no, heh i don't wanna use scripts, it isn't that big of deal...

This question has been posed a number of times before. If you do a search of the forum, you should be able to find several answers, including an Apache mod, complete with the code.

I think that to substitute an image, however, you'll need to use of the many scripts, like Bandwidth Bandit, that has that capability.

put this in a .htaccess file in your images dir.

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://9ug.com/.*$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.9ug.com/.*$ [NC]
RewriteRule .*\.(gif|GIF|jpg|JPG|jpeg|JPEG|SWF|swf)$ http://www.9ug.com/9ug.gif [R]

(of course you will want to edit the domain name.)

Originally posted by ckizer
I'm seeing a few instantance of people copying my code and just pasting it and leaving links back to my spacer gifs and such, the idea that eats my bandwidth doesn't make me happy :)

If it is possible please let me know how, thanks!

Have you got absolute paths to your spacer gifs?

You could change the names of your gifs periodically - wouldn't that break the stolen scripts?

I tried this on my server from burstnet and it gives me a 500 error...

here's a really sick thought, if you see say somebody stealing code by them calling for images, remotely, update your code to use a different name of them image, and then replace the name they are calling with a different image of any 'graphical' nature you choose, it a really powerfull, shall we say motivator...

This has been done and although sickening porn would be a good choice (something horridly nasty), a gif with your site URL on it (free advertising), or a note blasting them for taking the image would be nice.

I love to swap images to different ones. I generally don't use porn...but refer them back to our site. We used to frequently have competitors link to our images....using our well taken (expensive, I might add) photo's on their site to sell the same product.

I generally put something like..."
This image was linked to from www.mydomain.com, come over to www.mydomain.com for the best prices and service".

Unfortunately the linking got out of hand, and I had to implement the dreaded "no right click" script with some complicated framesets. Which solved most of the problems.

I couldn't get the .htaccess and/or other scripts to work due to the way a custom shopping cart program called the images....but I may try again with the tips from here.

What log files in *nix based should i read for this? the error log?

I don't know why, but the first thing that came to my mind was to replace the image with...

******.cx

:stickout :stickout :stickout

Anyone get this to work on burstnets dedicated servers?