reducing bandwidth, how can I do it?

How can I keep people from linking to my images?

[oaktown]

Mods, I hope I'm posting this in the right forum, if not, please accept my apologies in advance.

I have a site. The site has original, written content. The site has images. I'm getting more and more traffic every week. (No complaint there)

My problem is that some webmasters are linking directly to images on my site and this is dismaying for a number of reasons, not least of which is the extra bandwidth burden it puts on my server.

Is there a way that I can keep people from linking directly to my images?

Thanks in advance.

[bcolflesh]

[webmasterworld.com...]

[oaktown]

Thanks much, bcolflesh!

I was hoping to find something that would just protect the images. The thread you're pointing to is 17 pages long and it'll take me a while to scan, but if I understand what I have read so far, the .htaccess is for banning bots and most, if not all of the sites linking to my images seem to have found them manually.

Or do I just need to keep reading until I find the magic nugget?

Again, I do appreciate the help!

[bcolflesh]

Sorry - first one was a Library thread, but maybe too general - try this:

[webmasterworld.com...]