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.