How to stop bandwidth theft
I have no problems with blogs quoting stuff that I write in my own blogs. I do have problems when blogs outright copy my material without 1) asking me and 2) giving me any credit. And finally, I have some serious issues with blogs that post up images of my content using my server to deliver those images. I’m paying for that bandwidth and that site is making money off of my content… what’s up with that?
While it’s extremely hard to stop this kind of copyright infringment from a technical perspective, you can stop people from hotlinking or using your bandwidth to serve up images on their own site.
Here’s an excellent article over at altlab.com that details how you can do so. Of course the details are all in the .htaccess file to no surprise. The concept is simple - intercept the request for any image or multimedia file and serve up something else - say.. a file that says “STOP LEECHING”.
