Date: Thu, 19 Jan 2006 14:20:12 -0500
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>,
        WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>
From: "Mike B." <omni at omniphile.com>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: When Cuteness Runs Amok
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>

At 1/19/2006 12:53 PM, Barry L. Newton wrote:
>Most Remarkably, Mike B. wrote:
> >Who enjoys and overly paranoid anti-bandwidth theft notice???
>
>You haven't lived until you've had people linking your images into their
>own sites, without even attribution.  This is done a lot by people who
>either can't be bothered to ask permission and post their own copies of

I understand the problem with linking to others' pictures...I even helped
Keith deal with such a site by creating an alternate graphic for the WSFA
site's link to embarrass the offender.  In this case the reason I said
"overly paranoid" is that the situation was such that anyone trying to
access the pics on that site was accused of linking to it, when they
weren't.  They were just looking at it.

If he doesn't want people just looking he should hide the directory and not
let people see the file name list, and provide an HTML file to let them see
the pics if he wants them visible without linkage (which is sort of what
happens when you allow the directory listing and don't provide an
index.html).  His HTML file can include PHP or CGI stuff to check to see
who the referrer is, and block linkages, or provide an alternate graphic in
that case.  On many systems it's also possible to block access from
specific IPs, so if a site does try linking (there are ways to find out the
file name anyway) he can just deny all access to it.  Setting up code to
detect this automatically (for instance too many "hits" from the same IP in
a short period of time) should also be possible.

He appears to have some fancy stuff going on to send the anti-theft message
rather than the picture, so it shouldn't be too much harder to add the
extra checks to differentiate a browser accessing from a human-entered URL
and one coming through a link from another site.

I could be wrong...I'm still learning the details of how to do this stuff,
but I *think* what I'm saying is correct (anyone who knows better is free
to correct as needed and desired...and will be appreciated).  If necessary,
I could try setting up what I'm talking about to see for sure...but there
are several projects ahead of that on the to-do list...

-- Mike B.
--
Look before you loot.