I’m sure most of this site’s visitors know how I feel about other sites running my images, but just to reiterate :
I don’t have a problem at all with images that have not been commissioned running on non-commercial sites and blogs.
In fact, I usually am OK with the images being run from my server.
All I ask is a proper credit “Beau Bo D’Or” and a link back to my blog (the blog, not the root of the site and not the specific blog post).
There are some sites who may mistakenly abbreviate links or accidentally cock-up the link - not a problem - these things happen.
However, recently, there have been :
1. An increasing number of blogs using my images with no link or credit.
2. An increasing number of blogs running images from my server with no link or credit.
3. An increasing number of bulletin boards doing both 1. and 2.
4. An increasing number of private and/or subscription/registered users only blogs/sites doing both 1. and 2.
One through four could be caused either by the posters not giving a damn or by my failure to reiterate my policy from time to time.
But there is now :
5. An increasing number of dickheads who want a pretty pic for their myspace/bebo background and decide to run it from my server.
6. An increasing number of absolute dickheads who think that squeezing a large(ish) image into a miniscule space in a sidebar makes their site look pretty and my image legible - and decide to run it from my server.
(There are some lesser dickheads who squeeze an image into less than half the width of the original and the pic looks dire.)
There are those who reduce pic size but within reason and I certainly do not include them in my whinges above.
Have a look at Bench. He knows how to do it.
The only problem I have with him is he never got in touch when he came down to Camden the other week 
Just to clarify,
I have one paid-for gig with Channel 4 News and I have one agreement with a commercial site which I may be doing some work with in the future - Anorak.co.uk and, from time to time have been approached by commercial sites, making a request to run the odd pic, some of which I have granted.
I am more than happy for any non-commercial image to appear on www.markthomasinfo.com.
I don’t have a problem for the guys at arrse running my images.
So, what to do?
Well, I reckon if things don’t change soon, I’ll have to prevent hotlinking from my servers in the near future.
It won’t stop some of the dickheads mentioned above but it should reduce my frustration a tad.
This means that it’s best that the nice folk who are running images from my server (and who have been courteous and provided credits & links) copy those images to flickr or their own space and relink to ensure they still appear if I decide to switch the lights off.
It will involve a fair bit of work for me as I use a separate domain for my pics so I will have to copy over several hundred images.
For the technically minded, I’ve tried an htaccess file but there always seem to be unintended consequences.
