Fucking leech sites.

[redneckgaijin]

http://hentai.allhotcontent.com/hg/index7.html

If you try to go to that URL, you'll get an error page, so don't bother. Bouncing around will take you to a NSFW website that -claims- to be an utterly free non-spam adult website.

I mention them because they're leeching Peter is the Wolf.

In the site statistics for yesterday (5-28-06), the above URL was listed as referring to peteristhewolf.com 42 times... accessing 0, that is zero, HTML pages, but accounting for 18.15% of the day's TOTAL BANDWIDTH. Doing the math (2.75 GB yesterday X 0.1815 = 499.125 MB, divided by 42) yields 11.88 MB PER HIT. That's almost precisely equal to the size of the adults-only version of the website.

And it only began yesterday.

These people aren't just stealing one or two pics, they're stealing the ENTIRE FUCKING WEBSITE... except for the HTML, which they are NOT grabbing.

I've sent them a cease-and-desist, but I have my serious doubts. I really hope I don't have to disable hotlinking- especially since I'm not certain I can do that myself, and I'd rather not call Dreamhost's direct attention to the content of the website.

Between this and spambots, I'm beginning to go off the idea of a totally unregulated Internet.

Comments

[jinwicked.livejournal.com]

I can help you disable hotlinking. It's pretty easy peasy. One of my favourite pasttimes is reading message boards in my referrals where someone has hotlinked an image, and they can see it (because it's cached) while everyone else tells the person it's broken and an argument ensues. It won't stop people from just stealing the image and hosting it themself, though.

Let me know if you want to see my .htaccess file, you can pretty much just copy it and replace it with the info relevant to your sites. I have mine set up to load a 1k replacement image that says hotlinking is disabled. Do you have AIM?

[redneckgaijin.livejournal.com]

Thanks, but it wouldn't help. DreamHost only allows .htaccess modification through its control panel, and unfortunately they've coupled it with WebDAV- which means if I'm not careful I risk locking myself out of the directories to be protected. (And getting a robots.txt file in place, well, just ain't happening.)

Also, I'm reluctant to block hotlinking because I use it myself on occasion to promote WLP, or just to transfer files from here to an artist working on a project. If I have to, I will, though.

As for AIM, I'm RedneckGaijin on AIM. Be warned, though; this computer has a wonky power supply that turns itself on a LOT, so I can be listed as on AIM when in fact I'm asleep, away from home, or even hundreds of miles away.

[jinwicked.livejournal.com]

I use DreamHost and I've always just uploaded my .haccess via FTP.

I have several different .htaccess files in different directories depending on how I want them protected. Frex I have a directory labelled journal that has no protection so I can hotlink to stuff there from ye old LJ.

So in my top level, I have two main images directories:

/imgs/

and

/journal/

where /imgs/ is the one with hotlinking locked down, and has the protection, and anything else I need to hotlink I load to /journal/.

Is your DreamHost account signifigantly different from mine?

My AIM is Jin Wicked XVII; I'll add you because I have mine whitelisted.

[redneckgaijin.livejournal.com]

I don't know what your account is; mine's the top-tier shared hosting, "Strictly Business." If you have dedicated hosting, then it'd be different; otherwise not.

[jinwicked.livejournal.com]

No, I use shared hosting too.

You disable hotlinking by putting the .htaccess in the folder you want to protect, and it will protect all subfolders unless they have their own .htaccess specifying otherwise. You should be able to protect only an image directory without having it affect anything else, since all the .htaccess does is make sure the request is coming from specified domains you list.

If you change your mind and want to see how I did it, let me know.

[dvandom.livejournal.com]

Remember, if you don't want clients mucking about directly in directories, you don't have to actually block access. Just TELL THEM they can only do it via some control panel, and enough of them will believe you that you get almost the entire benefit of actually blocking access without having to actually do so (and thus risk mucking up your own access). :)