Stealing Bandwdith

stealing bandwidth and taking credit

[azn romeo 4u]

Hi, basically there's a site that is stealing my bandwidth. I allow hotlinking to a lot of web pages, however this site is taking the content out of my page and redistributing it.

While I didn't create the file(s), I do host it. The file is freeware and were submitted by users.

The person is saying, they created it and taking credit from hosting it. Also, for each file they take, they leave a Created By theirsite.com or hosted by theirsite.com

Can I do anything about? Besides turning on hotlink protection? Or deleting the file?

[larryhatch]

1) Rename the file(s).
2) Have your pages point or link to the new filenames.
3) Have lots of fun with the OLD file names, as in really original content
You could point out the hot-linking or put up something raunchy. Use your imagination! -Larry

[Leva]

To avoid confusing legimate users who may have bookmarked your site, I'd simply do an htaccess level ban of the offending site and have your server serve something something subtley incorrect instead. Bad grammar, bad spelling, incomplete information. Make them look bad, but in a way they may not immediately realize. Serving a nudie is immediately obvious. Serving a page full of typos and bad info? Not so obvious. And now they have this "created by" tag on it claiming THEY wrote the bad article....

If you know what IP they're accessing the web with (likely not the same IP as their site) you can further stymie them by having your site serve a blank page whenever they try to access it, or redirect them somewhere obnoxious. (My site just says the site's down when I ban an IP.)

But DON'T move the file and replace it with something rude or crude. Because likely your legitimate users may have some of the files bookmarked. You don't want someone innocent getting an eyefull.

Leva

[azn romeo 4u]

that's what I was worried about. a lot of the users already have use these files.

Can't I tell their host or something to tell them to remove teh content from their site and claiming that they made it?

[DoppyNL]

you could serve up different content based on the referer.

If the referer is from that site, simply return something different, something in the line someone before me allready has mentioned :).