Stealing Entire Pages

content and images

[TheWebographer]

There are a couple of pesky websites that have taken to copying the entire HTML source code of our web articles and pasting the code into a new page on their server - links, content, images and all ...

Then they add something like
<BASE href=http://www.our-web-site.com/article123>
up in the head section of the page in the hopes they can successfully capture images and links that I have coded relative to the page (that is, like .../images/xyz.jpg )

So Basically they are stealing the entire web page.

I already prevent image hotlinking in an .htaccess file so they are getting tons of broken images when they do this. What I am trying to figure out is if its possible to redirect the page to one of our pages on OUR server whenever another website tries to hotlink an image?

I have tried using Javascript but they are clever enough to simply remove it. Is there something in .htaccess I can do?

Thank you in advance :-)

[mrose]

If you can prove what you are saying, contact their ISP and ask them to remove the stolen pages from the server.

Usually works extremly well. We have had a couple of those thiefs and the stolen content was removed within 24-48 hours.

[carfac]

Webographer:

As above, a VERY strongly worded letter to the ISP (with URL examples, and snippets of their code referencing your BASE URL) should be quite effective. I had this happen with a MSN homepage- took 2-3 days to get results.

Regarding redirecting a hotlinked image to a new page... apples and oragnes. The call is for an image, you cannot return an html... (well, you CAN, but it would not work!)

Your best results would be if you did a mod_rewrite based on any jpg¦gif requests from their domain and returned an image that is a graphic image of your URL, or paossibly a nasty message! (This image stolen by BAD GUYS from my website! The REAL website this is from is: [mysite.com)...]

Had this problem a lot with E-Bay. I now returnb ANY request for an image that has ebay in the url with an image that says, "Free Next Day Shipping via FedEx to the winner of this auction! Use PayPal for 25% off!" Needless to say, MY images do not stay hot-linked for long!

Good Luck!

Dave

[carfac]

Webographer:

Had another idea. If you are feeling really nasty... return a really graphic porno picture for any calls to images from their domain. THAT would be VERY funny! :)

dave

[kevinpate]

It wouldn't be very funny if my mamma or my child was the one viewing the webpage. C'mon now, it's not the viewer's fault some webhead decided to hotlink an image.

If you deliberately send out a porn image, I agree the image thief ought not to be hotlinking, but well, the hotlinker isn't the one making the deliberate decision to send out a porn pic.

If someone in authority comes knocking on your door, are you going to be very comfortable saying "gee, I'm real sorry an 8 year old and her granny were delivered a porn image. I was only trying to embarass an image thief."

[Dreamquick]

On a related note can anyone suggest an easy method to stop hotlinking of images under IIS w/ ASP?

Using ASP to indirectly serve the images has crossed my mind but it seems like overkill to be perfectly honest...

- Tony

[TheWebographer]

Thank you for the responses everyone. Most helpful.

I have already used .htaccess to deliver alternative images when someone hotlinks to an image(s) on our site - an image that says "Stolen From www.ourwebsite.com".

One problem with this is with browser or isp cacheing - it seems if someone visits the site with the stolen hotlinked images and then visits our website their browser cache will sometimes keep the "Stolen From www.ourwebsite.com" image in place of the image that should be there. I do not really want to disable browser or isp caching if I can help it.

So there is no way, when someone steals our content and hotlinks our images, for me to force a redirect to our website?

[Dreamquick]

You can't server-side redirect an entire page via one image because the image edirect simply tells the browser to look for that image in a new location.

JavaScript probably offers the best route for forcing the entire page to go somewhere else, but I'm not sure if you could get an IMG tag to run javascript when its being fed as part of the image!

- Tony

[carfac]

>>> wouldn't be very funny if my mamma or my child was the one viewing the webpage

Nor my mother or child. But it would sure get traffic (or your images) off that site in a hurry. And might also prompt the ISP in question to remove it quicker.

Personally, anyone who would do this (steal a whole page and then hot link images) is not deserving of ANY of my sympathy. Additionally, any porn shown on their it would reflect on them, not me. Just the fact that they would steal a page like this says a lot about their "sleaze" factor already, and I would hope that neither of our mothers or children would be there anyway.

But the bottom line is I suggested it as a joke. :) I do hope SOMEONE at least got a chuckle!

>>> One problem with this is with browser or isp cacheing

No way to overcome this now. Just do the best you can with what you got... and look to the fututre. And even if (and I hope you do!) get the ISP to pull this guys plug, you would STILL have this problem!

>>?> So there is no way, when someone steals our content and hotlinks our images, for me to force a redirect to our website?

I am pretty sure no- the requrst comes in for a image/jpg, and anything returned not of that protocal will just result in a broken image...

dave