How can I stop someone from stealing my images?

[draggar]

I have a site and seems that people *love* to link the images to other sites and this is driving my bandwidth usage though the roof.

How can I stop this other than changing the name of the files every week?

[Gerry]

Copyright them.

Make sure you have a statement on the site(s) you post them regarding use.

No...you do not need to file for any legal documents to copyright your own intellectual property.

As mentioned, make sure you post usage requirements and that all images and text is copyrighted by you.

[stock_post]

Watermarking is another option.
Add your site name.

[DomainsInc]

the only real way to stop them is using .htaccess. looks it up in google.

[draggar]

Both are great ideas but won't stop the bandwith theft, I don't want to get flagged by my host, one of them is a HUGE drain.

I found this, add it to the .htaccess file:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(.+\.)?mysite\.com/ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteRule .*\.(jpe?g|gif|bmp|png|jpg)$ /images/nohotlink.jpe [L]


(rename /images/nohotlink.jpe with a file - maybe a site URL image). I'm also assuming I change "mysite" to the domain (w/o TLD)?

I wouldn't mind the traffic if it was legit,though!

[Gerry]

Honestly, nothing can stop anyone from stealing anything.

[POLiSH]

Place this in your .htaccess

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(.+\.)?mysite\.com/ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteRule .*\.(jpe?g|gif|bmp|png)$ http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/237/hotlinkp.gif [L]


That will display a hotlink image re-directed to showing hotlinkp.gif. Change the mysite\.com/ to reflect your domain.

- POLiSH

[Banned: dn-101]

U can't stop anybody

[POLiSH]

- The correct answer is you can stop anyone.

[draggar]

I'll do the .htaccess later and I'll also add a watermark to the images so that if they right-click and save then it'll show it's from my site.

[POLiSH]

Also, if you want to block a specific site use the following:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://(.+\.)?myspace\.com/ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://(.+\.)?blogspot\.com/ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://(.+\.)?livejournal\.com/ [NC]
RewriteRule .*\.(jpe?g|gif|bmp|png)$ http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/237/hotlinkp.gif [L]

[draggar]

Break that one down please? I'm assumin that will block myspace, blogspot, and livejournal?

What's the NC & OR for?

[stock_post]

if you have time, rename the file every now and then.
use the old file name for displaying a banner showing your site advertisement.

(Depends on how much time you have to kill)

[POLiSH]

Correct it is site specific so feel fee to add additional site's as needed.

As far as the code:

Apachie Handler NC = "No Case", or "case-insensitive and OR = specifies a logical "or" that ties two expressions together such that either one proving true will cause the associated rule to be applied.

[Johnn]

.htaccess should work. But here is what you may want to do.
Rename the images with something else.
Upload some "bad pictures" and use the old names.

[katherine]

I would do the rewrite as above to serve the offenders a real nasty image
Keep in mind though that the refer may not always be available.

[BobDiGiTaL]

cant you disable the right click option on your site?

[whitebark]

if you have time, rename the file every now and then.
use the old file name for displaying a banner showing your site advertisement.

(Depends on how much time you have to kill)

This one has worked for me as well. Get some free advertising out of it.

but if you really want to stop them outright do as Polish mentioned - block image hotlinking or by their domain via .htaccess.

[Gerry]

does this prevent the images from showing up on "print screen"?

[katherine]

cant you disable the right click option on your site?

This won't help, because this would only apply to a browser visiting the website, and only if Javascript is enabled so it's easily circumvented.
They are linking to images remotely.