"My God, It's Full of Hotlinks!"
I finally got fed up with seeing 700-800 hits per day in my site logs generated by hotlinking MySpace asshats siphoning off my precious bandwidth to make their hideously ugly and unusable webpages, so I decided to take action. It took me a while to figure out how to redirect image links within my Gallery2 directories, but a little tutoring in Perl courtesy of Google soon had my images locked up tighter than a duck's ass. The results of my handiwork can be viewed above.
Suck on that bandwidth, you little twits.
Update: I've been informed by at least one person that my no-hotlinking image comes through on their RSS feed. I've specifically exempted Bloglines, Netvibes, and LiveJournal from being blocked, so if you're using a different service to aggregate your RSS feeds, let me know and I'll try to accommodate you.
Comments
Hope it's a lightweight image.
Posted by: rone | November 12, 2006 2:19 PM
It's only 24k.
Posted by: MrBaliHai | November 12, 2006 2:25 PM
Think it's a bit too aesthetically pleasing. Really out to serve up something so hideous and awful that a single look at it tiled across a site will blind onlookers.
Posted by: jmorrison | November 12, 2006 2:55 PM
I briefly contemplated putting up some hideously grotesque pr0n image, but there are legal ramifications to consider.
Posted by: MrBaliHai | November 12, 2006 3:05 PM
Is a duck's ass considered pr0n?
Yeah, and stealing bandwith sucks.
Posted by: orangeguru | November 12, 2006 4:46 PM
Is a duck's ass considered pr0n?
Yes, if two hands are spreading the feathers apart.
Duckse
Posted by: MrBaliHai | November 12, 2006 5:02 PM
The trouble is, those twats probably don't even know what 'hotlinking' is.
Posted by: The Cartoonist | November 12, 2006 5:07 PM
I agree, Ralf, which is why I though it would be more fun to redirect them to an image instead of simply blocking access.
I also decided to make a redirection image that was a little more apropos to the Goof.
Posted by: MrBaliHai | November 12, 2006 5:20 PM
Good idea for that but it also sends that image to your RSS feed!
Posted by: Shawn Honnick | November 12, 2006 9:23 PM
Clever clever. Nice going with that image. LOL.
Oddly those images showed up in my RSS reader when your entries came up. *sigh* For some reason my feed reader keeps getting EOG posts in very funky ways.
I'm just going to have to switch to a new Super-Duper web platform.
- Gary
P.S. You're right there are so many crappy MySpace pages.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,71998-0.html
Posted by: Special G | November 12, 2006 9:32 PM
That'll teach them!
Posted by: The Cartoonist | November 13, 2006 2:27 AM
you are a brainiac mr.balihai!
i just started using myspace + right now i'm enamored by all the mod groovy images i'm finding, + hoping to find new readers, but i didn't realise i'm exposing myself to bandwith bandits!!!
Posted by: mod*mom | November 13, 2006 4:32 AM
Shawn: You shouldn't see the image if you're using Bloglines, Netvibes, or LiveJournal to read my feed. What RSS aggregator are you using?
Gary: My feed has been behaving in strange way lately, so it may not be your platform.
Posted by: MrBaliHai | November 13, 2006 5:26 AM
Bloglines is working fine.
Posted by: orangeguru | November 13, 2006 9:28 AM
It's working great now--thanks!
Posted by: Shawn Honnick | November 13, 2006 10:03 AM
Cool.
Posted by: MrBaliHai | November 13, 2006 11:50 AM
Now your hotlinking image is 72K. I bet you could make it a lot smaller than that, since the point is to cut down on stolen bandwidth...
Posted by: rone | November 13, 2006 3:10 PM
You're a real size queen, aren't you?
Posted by: MrBaliHai | November 13, 2006 5:01 PM
25k. Happy now?
Posted by: MrBaliHai | November 13, 2006 6:55 PM
I still don't know how to do this. Please point me to the best tutorials.
Posted by: robert | November 16, 2006 5:36 PM
This page explains how to do it, and will even generate the code for you:
Posted by: MrBaliHai | November 16, 2006 5:58 PM
THANKS!
Posted by: robert | November 16, 2006 8:40 PM
That is pretty nifty. The image showed up in my reblog within wordpress. But oh, no -- that means I can't reblog the occasional tiki post now with clicky ease? Ah, well, a small price to pay for tasty content.
Posted by: captain Flumox | November 16, 2006 10:02 PM