Hotlink Protection via .htaccess - but as an advert ?

[Mort-lemur]

Hi,

 

Not sure if this is possible or not, and if it is I only want to do the job once and properly - as I dont want to kill my site.

 

I have found that some of my images are being hot-linked by other sites, but rather than stop them cold, what I would like to do is serve an alternative image that says something like "Buy This from mystore.com" obviously in jpeg format - that way the hotlinking sites will advertise to buy from me instead.

 

Is this possible? if so what is the correct .htaccess code to use?

 

One final question - if I do something like this will it impact on google shopping or other legitimate linking sites?

 

Many Thanks

[burt]

hongkiat.com/blog/smarter-way-to-prevent-image-hotlinking-with-htaccess/

[oscMarket]

http://www.davidairey.com/stop-image-theft-hotlinking-htaccess/

[Mort-lemur]

Thanks guys - both links answer the "how to" but my question remains on how this will affect images on sites such as google shopping etc - I dont want to show a false image there !

 

Thanks

[Jack_mcs]

Hotlinking can use a lot of bandwidth and slow the site down. Since supplying the image wouldn't stop others from doing it, you could, in theory, bring your site to a standstill. Also, even if your image says "buy from this great site" the text that accompanies it, which you have no control over, may say "This is the worst site ever and will steal from you. Do not use it." Unless you plan to monitor all of the sites that steal your images, I don't suggest doing this.

[MrPhil]

Your "whitelist" in the .htaccess entry shows (in addition to your own site) other sites which are allowed to use your images without getting your 'ad' images. Hotlink protection is simply URL rewriting or redirection to whatever you want -- a FAIL message, an advertising image, or even a whole page (in which case the hotlinker's page may blow up when it receives an HTML page rather than a simple image). I'm not sure what Jack is saying about "text that accompanies it"... I suppose that if someone got pissed off at your ad (instead of an image), they could waste their own space and bandwidth by putting up such text to accompany your image. Rather childish and self-defeating, if you ask me. You can get around that by including in the ad a message that "This site attempted to steal (hotlink) an image from my site. You are seeing this ad instead." Change the layout frequently in case they try to trim or overlay something on the image.

[Jack_mcs]

I'm not sure what Jack is saying about "text that accompanies it"...

Many times, such images will be used on blogs and forums, as opposed to someone else's site. If clicking on the posted image goes to the op's site, others may associate that site with what others say about the post in those thread, which can be negative. Just something else to consider.

[MrPhil]

Good point. Sometimes you just have to make lemonade out of those lemons. If the image being stolen (hotlinked) clearly says "this is an ad for another site that this site attempted to steal from", I don't think it will be hotlinked for long. More likely a copy will be stolen and kept on the offending site. Some sort of watermarking might be in order in that case, as well as a copyright (text) notice within the file. The latter could be useful in proving theft and having the offending site closed down.

 

I doubt that someone would bother to set up a link back to your site from the stolen picture/ad being used in a forum/blog, but I suppose it's possible if they're really cheesed about it. If you hotlink protect your files right away, no one is going to bother hotlinking your images (unless they're stupid enough not to check their pages or forum/blog post before publishing it).

 

The bottom line for me would be to

1. watermark valuable images, and include a text copyright if possible

2. hotlink protection with either a FAIL or deliver an ad image that clearly says that the site is stealing images

 

If someone wants to try to associate your ad with an unsavory site, you're protected because the image says that it was stolen. If they're really, really determined to harm you in retribution, I think there will be more serious things to worry about than your "ad" appearing in an undesirable place.

 

BTW, isn't Google Images the world's biggest hotlinker? I wonder if they can detect an "ad" type replacement rather than a FAIL? I'm assuming that they didn't go out and ask permission of millions of image owners, but they probably have had a human pass judgement on which pictures to list under what keywords.