Other web sites using my picture url...

what should i do with my .jpg image on my site?

[recordc48]

There are thousands of pages of another site that used a graphic of mine years ago. Instead of just saving the graphic themselves, they used the full url from my site. http://www.example.com/picture.jpg and so it calls it from my server. I pay extra every month because of all the traffic that gets called on the server. Since I am paying extra money, I want to make it worth it so my question is this:

Is there a way that I can save the picture in my ftp so that it shows up as a link on their site when they call it up from my url: http://www.example.com/picture.jpg?
Or any other creative ideas of what I can do in this situation? If not I am just going to change the picture to look like more of an ad for my web site and feature my URL so that viewers can see it and hopefully type it into the address bar. Any other ideas would be great. - Thanks

[1][[b]edited by[/b]: korkus2000 at 7:53 pm (utc) on Mar. 2, 2004][/1]
[1][edit reason] examplified url [/edit][/1]

[korkus2000]

I have seen making an ad all the way to putting up porn. I think you should contact the webmaster and ask for a link. If they refuse that then you can always stop it with several server side technologies. You could also try and use dcma with the search engines. Depends really how far you want to go.

[Mardi_Gras]

I think the porn idea or changing the link to an image that says "This image stolen from www..." would be the way to go.

Being more of a pessimist than Korkus2000, I don't think I would bother contacting them. They have already proven they are scumbags. Maybe I need to work on my attitude :)

[Webwork]

I'd caution against feeding porn - EVER - as this could implicate you in possible violations of law or claims for emotional damage, for instance, delivering a crude sexual image to a site children visit. You would be doing it knowingly. The "excuse" - that someone else was stealing the image - will be a weak defense to the claim that you knowingly facilitated the publication of pornographic material. Jail is always a possibility for you - the "feeder". No kidding. I know you don't feel like the bad guy but I assure you that you would not make a sympathetic "victim" if porn was your choice.

Instead, why not feed an ad for your site at the existing URL?

If you know how many times the image has been pulled from your server you might also send the thief a bill. No kidding. Mention the fines for copyright violations and keep your logs as evidence.

Webwork, Esq.

[recordc48]

Thanks for the input guys, enough with the porn jokes though. What I did was change the image so that it had my URL visible on it in hopes that viewers would click through. The problem with contacting the webmaster and asking for it to be changed to a link is that the web site is a community web site and one of my site pictures is on hundreds of the individuals pages. It is a good picture and these amateur web designers grabbed it from my url instead of saving it themselves.

Is there any way that I can create a new image that is somehow a link? Or is there anyway that I can give this .jpg image some dynamic features like mouseovers or links, etc... But all done with just the access to my ftp and not the other sites?

[Shannon Moore]

If you don't want to "pay for the traffic" then don't replace the image with anything. Porn, ad or whatever, you'll still be serving up some image for every link they've got to your graphic and that's not going to help your bandwidth (it may hurt it, if your replaced graphic is larger than the original!)

So, if you're on Apache, just use mod_rewrite to rewrite requests for either that particular graphic, or all off-site hyperlinked graphics, to NOTHING. Voila, bandwidth saved.

Visit the Apache forum here for details on various htaccess rules and mod_rewrite. Other options are available for folks on non-Apache servers.

[seindal]

Is there any way that I can create a new image that is somehow a link? Or is there anyway that I can give this .jpg image some dynamic features like mouseovers or links, etc... But all done with just the access to my ftp and not the other sites?

No, you have to settle for just chaing the image.

I'm in a similar situation, and I just display a picture saying something along the lines of "This image cannot be displayed here. Please visit **** for more info."

René

[Romeo]

Hi recordc48,

if you have control over your web server, then try some rewrite-rules to send an alternate picture with a "no direct linking plse, visit my page... instead" text or similar, as others already suggested.

If you don't have access to your .htaccess to do this, then just simply rename your jpg picture file once a week and let the others show screwed web pages by running into a "404 not found" for their picture's link pointing to nowhere.

Regards,
R.

[sidyadav]

There's a tool called 'HotLink Protection' in cPanel which does exactly what this thread has been started for.

The description follows:

HotLink protection prevents other websites from directly linking to files (as specified below) on your website. Other sites will still be able to link to any file type that you don't specify below (ie. html files). An example of hotlinking would be using a <img> tag to display an image from your site from somewhere else on the net. The end result is that the other site is stealing your bandwidth. You should ensure that all sites that you wish to allow direct links from are in the list below. This system attempts add all sites it knows you own to the list, however you may need to add others.

Very useful - I use it all the time to protect my images.

If your host doesn't have cPanel, tough luck mate. Oh wait, you could always change hosts.

Sid

[Shannon Moore]

The cpanel hotlink prevention just automates the creation of a couple mod_rewrite rules... it works, but it's not doing anything someone couldn't do with access to edit their .htaccess file.

[Herath]

If we use htaccess to block hotlinks, what would search bots see?

Most searchbots (including googlebot) never sets the referrer to 'yoursite.com' when it's comming to your pages through your links.

So, if we block hotlinks, searchbots might see our pages as bad pages with broken images.

[Shannon Moore]

If you do your htaccess rules correctly, there's no problem with blank referers. Check out the Apache forum [webmasterworld.com], as mentioned earlier, for htaccess rule advice and discussion...

[recordc48]

Thanks for all the replies. I am aware of my choices in not letting them use my picture and my bandwidth. I am actually fine with it for now, but I was hoping that there was a way to turn it into some business. My site sells products that have to do with the picture they are using, and the best advice I got was to change the image into one that is more of an advertisement, which I have done, but I am getting several thousand people per day seeing that image, and it is too hard for me to track whether or not they actually type in the url into the address bar and visit my site. I was just hoping for another alternative, but it doesnt seem like there is one out there. Thanks for the help though guys...

[seoler]

You could put an identifing url to your site on the image they are using so you would know the traffic came from it. Like... [yoursite.com...] , then create deal/index.html for those visitors.