A remedy for hotlinking

[robotech_master]

For the last several months, someone's been hotlinking an image on my Jordan Greywolf Art Gallery as his forum avatar. It's been using a significant amount of my bandwidth, in fact. Not enough to put me in any danger, but it's still been annoying.

Finally, I had it. Enough's enough. So I went into photoshop and made a nice little 100x100 image that was small enough that it wouldn't take up much of my bandwidth, but it would get the point across. I uploaded it onto my site, renamed the hotlinked image and changed the link in the art gallery index page (it's the Bat-Shadow one), and then made the old name a symbolic link to the 100x100 image file.

Just for giggles, go to this forum page and do a text-find on "fledermaus".

Wonder how long it'll be before he notices?

Edit, 9/26: He's noticed, he's changed his image to another one. And this time it's actually one hosted on the bulletin board itself. Heh.

The image to which I changed the one he was hotlinking was:



I only wish I could see if anybody mentioned the "steal bandwidth" icon in discussion threads in which he participated. I can't search on his name because I'd have to be logged in, and for some reason I can't get the damned thing to send me my confirmation email for creating an account.

Comments

[erikred.livejournal.com]

Most excellent! Also, since the forum's in German, I present my Babelfish research for your use:

"Ich stehle Bandbreite."

Happy hunting!

[robotech-master.livejournal.com]

Eh, too much trouble to go to. This is nicely multipurpose; he has to know English to have found my site in the first place.

(I was vaguely tempted to make it something like "Heil Hitler!" or a swastika since that would then put him in violation of German law, but there's a difference between being snarky and being just plain rude.)

[mechaman.livejournal.com]

Actually, he doesn't, especially if he was using Google Images, but the general point probably stands.

[strix-an-stones.livejournal.com]

Agreed. I have Russian friends on my list and employ Babelfish because I can't read Russian. And google image search kicks butt.

[point5b.livejournal.com]

It's more civilized than what SomethingAwful used to do to hotlinkers - something I learned to my chagrin when I linked an amusing image of theirs on my LJ.

I still have trouble believing anyone can do that with a penlight.

[robotech-master.livejournal.com]

Heh. It was kind of tempting to hunt up the goatse.cx picture, or maybe use rotten.com's "Motorcycle" (http://vagina.rotten.com/motorcycle/) (warning: gross), but in the end "I steal bandwidth" really gets the point across—not just to him, but to anyone who sees his posts.

[wesmills.livejournal.com]

My then-girlfriend had a bunch of icons she had created posted, and at the time they were stored on my website. The text at the top specifically asked that anyone who wanted to use one download it and host it on their site.

Someone had decided to hotlink to a "sunshine" graphic, and was using it on a Christian religious forum. When I saw it, and where it was posted (this person was a prolific poster; over 2,000 posts and all with this graphic), I swapped it out for a picture of an almost-topless woman. The comments on the forum were...interesting.