[vox] Content Sharing becomes Bandwidth Theft

[Dave Margolis]

mod_rewrite seems a better way to go, but i whipped up the following just
to see it work since i've been playing with gd/php lately.  i don't
submit this as a solution, but more of an entertaining (for me) musing.
the following assumes php compiled with gd and jpeg support, and that you
expect to see a picture of a tree.

a legit reference to the image looks like this:

<img src="image.php" alt="picture of a tree" width="300" height="225" />

image.php contains the following:

<?php

if(stristr($_SERVER["HTTP_REFERER"], "silogram.net") == FALSE) {
	$src = "finga.jpg";
} else {
	$src = "tree.jpg";
}

$image = imagecreatefromjpeg($src);

header("Content-type: image/jpeg");
imagejpeg($image);

imagedestroy($image);

?>

If you access http://www.silogram.net/php/imagetest.php, you get a nice
tree, but if you try to steal the image, you get da finga.

On Fri, 2 Apr 2004, ME wrote:

> Something that was done ages ago by people upset with this kind of
> behavior was to reject all referring URL which are not from your own
> domain.
>
> This causes people who use your bandwidth in this way to have icons which
> often do not work as expected. They must then decide if they want somehing
> that is broken for many people or something else.
>
> With apache you can do some clever things with mod_rewrite, and it may be
> of some use here. You could possibly take cases where a referring URL is
> not from your site, and replace it with an image that says something like,
> "I am an image thief as I like to steal bandwidth." Then, when people use
> your images, their "presence" is one of a thief. :-)
>
>
> -ME
>
> Jeff Newmiller said:
> > I just noticed that an image on my web page has been used by at least two
> > individuals as their avatar image on discussion lists.  Their use of the
> > image doesn't bother me... but the fact that they didn't put it on their
> > own webservers means that they are freeloading on my website.  Every time
> > someone reads their posts on those discussion lists, my site gets a
> > useless hit.
> >
> > I am thinking of moving the file (and changing all my internal links), and
> > replacing the file with a different image that communicates that this
> > is not acceptable behavior.  Any suggestions for appropriate images? One
> > of my calmer ideas was a yellow background with black letters that says
> > "Don't use someone elses image URL for your avatar", but there has to be a
> > better phrase or image...
> >
> > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > Jeff Newmiller                        The     .....       .....  Go
> > Live...
> > DCN:<jdnewmil@dcn.davis.ca.us>        Basics: ##.#.       ##.#.  Live
> > Go...
> >                                       Live:   OO#.. Dead: OO#..  Playing
> > Research Engineer (Solar/Batteries            O.O#.       #.O#.  with
> > /Software/Embedded Controllers)               .OO#.       .OO#.
> > rocks...2k
> > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
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> >
> >
>
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