A Little Help Please
Posted by: Beau Bo D'Or in Uncategorized, tags: hotlinking, Housekeeping, ImagesI’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.
Entries (RSS)
Given that you’re using Wordpress, this plugin will do the trick for you as long as the graphics are stored within your WP installation. http://www.techmixer.com/wordpress-images-hotlink-protection-plugin-protect-blog-images-from-images-theft-hotlinking/
Cheers Peter,
I’ll check it out on a test post soon.
I had some bother with this on my flickr account a while ago, a British travel guide called townpup.co.uk was leeching hundreds of photos of bits of the UK from various flickr users. I found the most satisfying solution was to temporarily replace one or two of my images with JPEGs of the words “WE ARE THIEVING FUCKERS” in very large black letters. Presumably this would be a bit impractical in this case, though.
Phew!
When i started reading I thought I was in for a bollocking!
Thanks for the mention.Hey, keep up the good work!
Best Wishes
Tony.
It will be unfortunate if you have to do this and I am concerned that it will impact those of us who read your RSS feed (e.g. via bloglines).
Done I see—understand completely why, but chance you could make the replacement image something more than a road sign? I got that it was a no-hotlinking thing, came here, hit hard refresh and got the image itself, but I reckon most feedreaders won’t and will think something is up—plus when they get here it’ll cache and they’ll not see it at at all.
Perhaps remove images from teh feed replace with a link text if possible?
The plugin was supposed to handle feeds but obviously it doesn’t.
The roadsign pic came with the plugin.
I’ve gone back to the old way until I can find a solution.
(although I’ve left the option in place on one old image)